"OTHER OS" Suggestion Thread: [Archive]

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RAV TUX

June 14th, 2006, 12:29 AM

by request the mother of all "Other Distros" Threads, post here for support or general chat about other Linux Distros, BSD, BeOS, Solaris or any other OS.;)

(Great for all Ubuntu users who like to experiement with other Distros)

RAV TUX

June 14th, 2006, 12:49 AM

OK I am running the DeadCD on my Ubuntu box and I have to say this is one of the most interesting and fun Distros.

NOT a primary Distro like Ubuntu or even dyne:bolic, but for those who like to test/collect little known Distros the DeadCD is a must have.

Ok I will play with the DeadCD some more. This is probably an excellent Distro overall I don't know why it is Dead, well aside from the name but I actually like it.

The minimalism is beautiful, almost poetic.

Johnsie

June 14th, 2006, 12:57 AM

Might check it out... I was playing around with puppy linux, dsl and xubuntu to choose an O/s for my oldskool webserver. Trying a new OS can be fun :-)

RAV TUX

June 14th, 2006, 07:18 AM

This thread is meant to be a consolidation of the following two threads by request:

1. DeadCD Thread
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=196250

2. GoblinX Thread
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=196001

This thread can be expanded to include chat, help, support, reviews on all other Linux Distros, BSD, BeOS, solaris or other OS Distros.

Dragonfly_X

June 14th, 2006, 08:56 AM

Check out Debian Hurd HERE (http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-cd)

It's still under develoment and you almost need a degree in quantam physics to install it. But it's worth a look if you are into UNIX/Linux development and testing.

RAV TUX

June 14th, 2006, 08:42 PM

G Morgan

June 14th, 2006, 08:55 PM

I think that having a DSL live cd handy is crucial if you play too much. It makes an excellent recovery disk. As does the Gentoo mimimal install disk if you don't mind playing in the command line too much.

I was going to try Debian/HURD in VMware but you needed a boot floppy to make it work and I couldn't be bothered quite frankly.

rcarring

June 15th, 2006, 12:10 AM

I am running Puppy Linux in a small vmware-vm with the folowing system spec:
allocated ram 128mb
hard disk ide 1GB originally all fat32 with a command prompt, used gparted to change it to --
hda1 fat32 primary win98 150mb
hda2 ext3 primary /home data storage 594mb
hda3 swap primary linux swap 256mb

When I had done partitioning I shutdown puppylinux and on shutdown it asked if i wanted to create a 512mb hardfile on either hda1 or hda2, I chose hda2.

The entire operating system is running from cd, with the os loaded to a ram drive. Any docs I want to save i can save to the hard file area on the vm hard disk.

All config files are saved to the hard file.

Network
---------
The os didn't pickup my card straight off, so I ran the networking wizard and clicked a few buttons (activate eth0, use dhcp) and I was able to access the world wide web.

Sound card is an emulated soundblaster ensoniq 1371 that has been correctly identified.

The sad thing is, none of thsi is rocket science and I wonder why Dapper requires nearly 2Gb to do the same thing, and btw I am using the default xvesa.org server...

23meg

June 15th, 2006, 03:36 AM

This looks good:

http://grml.org/

sefs

June 15th, 2006, 08:02 AM

I tried FreeBSD to see what it would be like and it took me back to the feeling I had of installing Slackware back in '97 (i.e lots of guessing and the feeling of confusion). For all that guesswork I had to put in for the installation all I got was a unix prompt, when it booted. It sucks not being a Unix Installation Guru. I'll try it again though when I have more spare time on hand.

patrick295767

June 15th, 2006, 01:15 PM

I could experience that slackware has a fast kernel for old pc

How fast is the fedora Core 5 for old PC ??
http://distrowatch.com/images/screenshots/fedora-5.png
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20060612#opinion

Greetz

richbarna

June 20th, 2006, 11:08 PM

I was digging through a box of old Linux distro's the other day and came across Symphony Live cd from about a year ago I think.
Well anyhow they've got a new beta that looks quite nice :-
http://www.symphonyos.com/gallery/main.php

685 Mb is a bit over my usual size for playtime distros, but it's coming down now. I'm a sucker for Debian based distro's :) Also the Mezzo desktop looks quite interesting.

http://nat.org/2005/may/mezzo2.png

http://nat.org/2005/may/mezzo1-small.png

RAV TUX

June 20th, 2006, 11:18 PM

I was digging through a box of old Linux distro's the other day and came across Symphony Live cd from about a year ago I think.
Well anyhow they've got a new beta that looks quite nice :-
http://www.symphonyos.com/gallery/main.php

685 Mb is a bit over my usual size for playtime distros, but it's coming down now. I'm a sucker for Debian based distro's :)

not to be kill joy but I tried SymphonyOS a few weeks back and was greatly disappointed.

richbarna

June 20th, 2006, 11:20 PM

not to be kill joy but I tried SymphonyOS a few weeks back and was greatly disappointed.

What was the problem with it ?

RAV TUX

June 20th, 2006, 11:41 PM

What was the problem with it ?
The hype on the website I think gave me over expectancies, I was disappointed in the quality of graphics and I thought the corner thing would be cool but I was disappointed. Give it a try and see what you think.

I strongly believe we all learn by experience and it is best to try things on your own.

Then make your own Judgment.

EDIT: you know how they have book clubs, we should start a online linux club. have groups of people focus on a new linux distro a week. then discuss in a forum like here.

richbarna

June 20th, 2006, 11:57 PM

EDIT: you know how they have book clubs, we should start a online linux club. have groups of people focus on a new linux distro a week. then discuss in a forum like here.

Now that would be a great idea for all the distro junkies =D>
Yeah, www.distro-junki.es ;)

As for the symphony download, it's at 50 percent now, so i'll give it a shot.
I'll have to check out those graphics, see what my nVidia can do with them.

I tried the yoper distro on the laptop and it was slooooow with the KDE environment, I'll give it a go on the desktop later this week if i've got time.

At the moment I am running off copy after copy of Dyne:Bolic for my distro junkie friends, people really have taken to it, thanks for the tip on that one.

briancurtin

June 20th, 2006, 11:58 PM

an online linux club? great idea.
what do you think this site is? what do you think every linux site is?

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 12:02 AM

Now that would be a great idea for all the distro junkies =D>
Yeah, www.distro-junki.es (http://www.distro-junki.es) ;)

As for the symphony download, it's at 50 percent now, so i'll give it a shot.
I'll have to check out those graphics, see what my nVidia can do with them.

I tried the yoper distro on the laptop and it was slooooow with the KDE environment, I'll give it a go on the desktop later this week if i've got time.

At the moment I am running off copy after copy of Dyne:Bolic for my distro junkie friends, people really have taken to it, thanks for the tip on that one.

I may have to do a new download of dyne:bolic, but I think I forgot something simple, it ask me for user and password on install but I forgot it?

is it root? PW: livecd?

or is it like Gentoo where you do nothing and it starts anyway.

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 12:04 AM

an online linux club? great idea.
what do you think this site is? what do you think every linux site is?

LOL =D> b.C. you always crack me up:pLOL

aysiu

June 21st, 2006, 12:05 AM

I, too, was disappointed with Symphony.

Of course, I was using it in Alpha (not even Beta), but the corner thing sounds a lot better in theory than in practice.

The most precise way to do anything is still using the keyboard, not rolling your mouse cursor into a corner. And the corner options are a bit confusing--maybe I'm just too used to a Start Menu from Windows... that's what Gnome, KDE, and XFCE have, and that's what I use.

Who knows? When I'm older and arthritic, I may dig Symphony's Mezzo a bit more.

richbarna

June 21st, 2006, 12:11 AM

an online linux club? great idea.
what do you think this site is? what do you think every linux site is?

Er ? Isn't this a ..... forum ? you know? the name and everything (ubuntuFORUMS) for example.

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 12:15 AM

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 12:17 AM

I may have to do a new download of dyne:bolic, but I think I forgot something simple, it ask me for user and password on install but I forgot it?

is it root? PW: livecd?

or is it like Gentoo where you do nothing and it starts anyway.
richbarna, I really need your help with this.

richbarna

June 21st, 2006, 12:20 AM

And the corner options are a bit confusing--maybe I'm just too used to a Start Menu from Windows... that's what Gnome, KDE, and XFCE have, and that's what I use.

I am the same with that, but I'll give it a go anyway. It's always nice to try something different

Who knows? When I'm older and arthritic, I may dig Symphony's Mezzo a bit more.

Lol, When we are old and arthritic, everything will be voice controlled. The kids will be using technology that will leave us feeling ........old.

briancurtin

June 21st, 2006, 12:24 AM

Er ? Isn't this a ..... forum ? you know? the name and everything (ubuntuFORUMS) for example.
what is different about what we are doing here on this forum, than you would do in a club meeting? discussion topics, votes (polls), plan projects, troubleshoot, etc.

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 12:34 AM

what is different about what we are doing here on this forum, than you would do in a club meeting? discussion topics, votes (polls), plan projects, troubleshoot, etc.

We could use this "Other Distros" thread for this. The only thing different would be a bit of organization and agreed upon advanced directive(Pick a Distro to test)

OK who is interested. (Fill out the list below with qoutes)

1. Yozef
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

and each week a alternating member pick a new Distro to test, but we should come up with a good check list or acid test that we can come back to the forum with to give good substance.

week one Distro to test:

64 Studio
http://64studio.com/

group member #2 can pick the second weeks test.

richbarna

June 21st, 2006, 05:04 AM

We could use this "Other Distros" thread for this. The only thing different would be a bit of organization and agreed upon advanced directive(Pick a Distro to test)

OK who is interested. (Fill out the list below with qoutes)

1. Yozef
2. RichBarna
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

and each week a alternating member pick a new Distro to test, but we should come up with a good check list or acid test that we can come back to the forum with to give good substance.

week one Distro to test:

64 Studio
http://64studio.com/

week two Distro to test:

Berry Linux (511 Mb or Mini)
http://berry.sourceforge.jp/

group member #2 can pick the second weeks test.
.

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 03:56 PM

.

cool Richbarna we will have fun testing Distros.

Everybody else is welcomed to join in on the fun.:cool:

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 08:43 PM

Questions you might ask ¶ (http://64studio.com/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#Questionsyoumightask)

1. What is it?
64 Studio is a collection of software for digital content creation on x86_64 hardware (that's AMD's 64-bit CPUs and Intel's EM64T chips). It's based on the pure 64 port of Debian GNU/Linux, but with a specialised package selection and lots of other customisations. It will be marketed to hardware OEMs in the creative workstation and laptop markets as an alternative to the 64-bit version of Windows XP, or OS X on Apple hardware. You can browse the current default package list (http://64studio.com/file/packages/64studio/tasksel/lists/64studio).
2. Who's making it?
The founder of the company is Daniel James, who was one of the founders of Linux User & Developer magazine, and the original director of the linuxaudio.org consortium. Free Ekanayaka is in charge of software development - he is (almost) a Debian Developer, and is best known for his work on the AGNULA/Demudi Linux distribution.
3. Why are you doing this?
Linux has already proved itself as a capable and highly flexible platform for creative work, but so far there has been no specialist distribution which takes advantage of the 64-bit processors now widely available. We think creative people will be in the vanguard of 64-bit desktop adoption. (And it makes us mad as hell that when you buy a new 64-bit x86 machine, you have to pay for Windows whether you want it or not.)
4. Is it any good?
Due to the architecture-agnostic nature of most Linux and Debian code, nearly all the software we are using can be compiled natively for 64-bit platforms. So it's as good as any Linux distribution can be, only built to make the most out of today's hardware. You'll have to decide for yourself if it can replace Windows or OS X - but what we can say is that a default install of 64 Studio will provide far more creative tools that either of these platforms, and will also be considerably better value.
5. Where and when can I get it?
We have a fully functional distribution, although there are some features to be added yet, and some further polish is needed. You can already download an alpha version iso image from this site.
6. I thought Linux was supposed to be free. How come you want to charge me for it?
The software is free, in both senses of the word. However, if you want the complete package with technical support, you'll have to pay for it - because it costs us money to provide that support. The 64 Studio distribution, bought as part of a new workstation or laptop bundle, will be competitively priced compared to Windows. The price will be extremely competitive compared to a Windows plus applications bundle.
7. Is it anything to do with that Studio to Go software I've heard about?
Studio to Go (http://www.ferventsoftware.com/) is also based on Debian, but there are several important differences. Firstly, Studio to Go is 32-bit. Secondly, it's a 'live' distribution intended for CD-ROM booting - 64 Studio is designed to be pre-installed on your hard disc. Thirdly, STG is focused on music applications, where as 64 Studio includes many other creative packages.
8. If it's based on Debian pure 64, how is 64 Studio different from Ubuntu Linux for x86_64?
The principal difference is that Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/) is designed as a general purpose desktop environment, so the default selection of applications is very different. Ubuntu doesn't (yet) have the behind-the-scenes customisations for multimedia applications either.
9. I have an x86_64 computer and plenty of experience with Linux. I'd like to use 64 Studio but I don't really need to pay for support. What can you offer me?
It sounds like you might be interested in becoming a beta tester. Testers get the latest version of the software in return for providing their feedback on it - we think that's a fair exchange. We don't consider the development community to be second class citizens, compared to paying customers. You can download an .iso image and start using the software today - we look forward to seeing your bug reports on our ticket system!
10. The software sounds interesting, but I don't have a 64-bit computer (yet). Is there any way I can help with testing?
All of our changes to packages will be offered to the Debian project, except if they clash with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. You might like to consider joining the AGNULA/Demudi (http://demudi.agnula.org/) project, which produces a 32-bit Debian-based distribution for multimedia users.
11. I'm an OEM. Why should I be interested in 64 Studio?
There are lots of reasons; here are just a few. We can support your customers properly, instead of passing them back for you to deal with. We can preconfigure the software, including full branding, saving you development and deployment time. Our software can help you differentiate your products in a market saturated with Windows-based systems. And we can probably offer you a much better margin than Microsoft will ever do.
12. I have plans for a product which is similar in concept to 64 Studio - can you develop all or part of it for me?
Quite possibly - get in touch and talk to us about it. We can also develop and package software for 32-bit CPUs of course.
13. If I put your software into a product, I don't want to pay per unit royalties. Can you offer flat fee licensing terms?
We're very flexible, and are willing to negotiate over support terms for volume orders. However, the per-unit terms may suit an OEM which wants to gauge market demand first.
14. Why isn't there support for MP3 in the base 64 Studio distribution?
MP3 and other MPEG formats are patent-encumbered and subject to royalties - even when the encoder or decoder are free software. In addition, the GPL says you cannot take out a patent licence for GPL'd code unless the patent licence is fully GPL compatible (this is very unlikely). So far, it seems like the best solution to this thorny problem is to use the LGPL Gstreamer framework with Fluendo's patent-licenced plugins. If these plugins are made available for 64 Studio they will be packaged as an optional extra at a reasonable price, since they are not free software.
15. What kernel patches are you using?
The two most obvious changes from a standard Debian kernel are the realtime premption patches maintained by Ingo Molnar plus the realtime-lsm framework, and the bootsplash patches which give the distribution a graphical startup. We don't currently use rlimits, as the code didn't build properly last time we tried it - and realtime-lsm seems to work perfectly well.

rado_london

June 21st, 2006, 08:51 PM

I am one of the few here that has the good old Slackware. It is fast, difficult and sometimes gives me the plesure of playing with it. But I always keep Ubuntu as my main/stable OS.

RAV TUX

June 21st, 2006, 10:07 PM

RAV TUX

June 22nd, 2006, 01:50 AM

Berry Linux is by far the simply most beautiful and easy to use distro...a lot of good things have come out of Japan and Berry Linux is one of them.

I am using Berry on my Intel EM64T 64-bit Dual-core...a computer I have yet to get Ubuntu, SUSE, Mepis, or even Fedora Core 5 to work on which is odd because Berry Linux seems to be based on fedora core 5

patrick295767

June 22nd, 2006, 11:02 AM

Our Great UBUNTU is the happy Winner !!
http://www.quebecos.com/modules/xoopspoll/pollresults.php?poll_id=11 :KS

RAV TUX

June 22nd, 2006, 11:45 AM

Our Great UBUNTU is the happy Winner !!
http://www.quebecos.com/modules/xoopspoll/pollresults.php?poll_id=11 :KS

That is awesome but patrick primarily in this thread we are devoted Ubuntu users who like to test out other Distros.

You might want to start a seperate thread to spread your joy more effectively.

Thanks for sharing.

bruce89

June 22nd, 2006, 11:46 AM

That is awesome but patrick primarily in this thread we are devoted Ubuntu users who like to test out other Distros.

You might want to start a seperate thread to spread your joy more effectively.

Thanks for sharing.
It was pretty harmless in my opinion. If Lovechild were still here, he'd be advocating Fedora Core 5 no doubt. (Whatever happened to him?)

RAV TUX

June 22nd, 2006, 11:49 AM

It was pretty harmless in my opinion. If lovechild were still here, he'd be advocating Fedora Core 5 no doubt.

I know it was harmless but I think he would get more responses for his Joy,(which I think is great) by starting a new thread I support his post and joy 100%.

What happened to lovechild btw? Why is he not here anymore?

bruce89

June 22nd, 2006, 11:52 AM

What happened to lovechild btw? Why is he not here anymore?
All I know is that he has Burnt Beans, and hasn't been here (or Fedora's forums) for 3 weeks. - http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1060841&postcount=40

RAV TUX

June 22nd, 2006, 01:41 PM

All I know is that he has Burnt Beans, and hasn't been here (or Fedora's forums) for 3 weeks. - http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1060841&postcount=40

wow...how do you burn your beans?

bruce89

June 22nd, 2006, 02:07 PM

wow...how do you burn your beans?
You misbehave and get "referred", whatever that means.
Or you can get a flamethrower and...
Fedora Core 5 rocks, hands down the best distro I ever worked with. I am not even considering Dapper now that FC5 is out, why go with an outdated, less stabl, slower and insecure alternative?
One of his last comments.

SilverTab

June 22nd, 2006, 04:14 PM

richbarna

June 22nd, 2006, 04:52 PM

SilverTab

June 22nd, 2006, 10:16 PM

thanks richbarna! :)

I was always interested by damn small linux! Guess it's time to give it a try !

RAV TUX

June 22nd, 2006, 10:54 PM

yozef: You seem to have try a bunch of small livecd distro (Like deadcd, olive, damnsmall etc)

Do you know if one of them supports wireless out of the box? (One that would come with linuxant or something like that...or ndiswrapper (if possible))

It's my only problem with LiveCD...everyone I try out won't work with my Wireless USB dongle...only way I found to make it work in ubuntu is with ndiswrapper
I haven't tried DSL yet so I will leave that domain to richbarna but I have tried Puppy Linux and it does have a very intelligent & easy to use GUI tool for this.

In trying "Small" Distros give Puppy Linux a try.

Puppy Linux (http://www.puppylinux.org/)

"Overall, Puppy Linux is a superb, light-weight, fast and versatile Linux distribution with a great selection of applications, graphical system administration utilities and all sorts of unique features not readily available elsewhere. A great choice not only for older computers, but also for those who dislike the bloat of most modern distributions." - Distrowatch.com (http://distrowatch.com/puppy)

"DSL is sub-50M but is lacking many heavy-duty applications, or rather, they have to be added separately, which is really cheating as by the time you've added a few decent apps like Abiword, Mplayer, printer support, Gnumeric, or whatever, the size has blown out to something enormous. DSL does have basic applications, like very basic multimedia support, very basic wordprocessing, but I don't think they will satisfy you for very long. DSL is based on Knoppix and has probably the best hardware detection and under-the-hood infrastructure. For example, Perl. DSL has minimal docs in the distro ...
Puppy is built from scratch by myself (recently with much-appreciated help from the guys on the Puppy Forum). On the other hand, being built from scratch is an advantage, as Puppy is highly optimised for smallness and speed. Puppy has the largest number of applications in the 50-60M distro, not as later add-ons. Puppy has almost 3M of html docs included in the distro, which is unique. Puppy has Tcl/Tk which is also unique, which can be considered as a viable alternative to Perl. Puppy has shsql/Quisp network database, DSL has sqlite." Source (http://pupweb.org/puppy/faq.htm)
If you need help reinstalling Puppy Linux, please feel free to visit our support forum (http://murga.org/%7Epuppy/)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/8472/282sv.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=282sv.jpg)
Fluxbox-xorg-DNDicons

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/4066/523vr.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=523vr.jpg)
Enlightment (e17) WM (costal martignier)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/4172/554ii.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=554ii.jpg)
XFCE Puppy (ljones)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/1968/618wx.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=618wx.jpg)
Puppy 1.08r1, Enlightenment WM with transparent menus and applets (Rhino)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/7086/422ju.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=422ju.jpg)
Firefox theme - iFox; IceWM theme - Abby (saintlangton)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/2869/237sj.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=237sj.jpg)
Puppy with fluxbox (blue night theme), idesk, gentoo icons and qtcurve gtk theme (bombayrockers)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/3055/540xr.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=540xr.jpg)
KDE Puppy (klhrevolutionist)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/2573/603sf.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=603sf.jpg)
puppy 1.0.8 w/ seamonkey & icewm (area51)
(http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1)

RAV TUX

June 22nd, 2006, 11:27 PM

More Puppy screenshots:

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/1310/261bh.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=261bh.jpg)
Gorgeous! - Puppy showing tablaunch (the Mac-menu) and idesk (Lobster)

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6996/363ns.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=363ns.jpg)
Puppy Linux 1.0.7 installed to pendrive, First Blood playing from DVD, a game of HellChess, etc...

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/4532/446yi.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=446yi.jpg)
MarilynPuppySS (kcin)

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6498/89op.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=89op.jpg)
Puppy Penguin Sunrise (kcin)

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/3444/152ks.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=152ks.jpg)
Puppy 1.07a with Gentoo icons (Rhino)

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5535/229fx.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=229fx.jpg)
Puppy running KDE, Java, Apache, Open Office 2 and Wine (MU)

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8650/242ru.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=242ru.jpg)
Simplicity - IceWM, aqua theme (sprizz)

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/689/575fm1.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=575fm1.jpg)
BlueMarsPuppy_SS (kcin)

woedend

June 22nd, 2006, 11:47 PM

i think at some point i've tried most of the top 20 distros. I won't do an in depth review, but a quick thought or two on each (some statements may be as old as 2005 though)
From what i've found, ubuntu has been the overall favorite BUT also one of the slowest(with FC, suse, etc). Arch and vector are very fast, but I don't like their packaging methods. Yoper when I used it was one of the ugliest/misorganized distros I had used, and it wasn't all that fast(KDE <> fast on my machine).
Debian is great, but outdated or broken(testing vs unstable).
Mandriva made my hard drive make funny noises and kept 'skipping'...it scared me.
VLOS is based on gentoo. The only problem is that when they released it I installed it, and a lot of things were broke. They quickly put out a new "fixed" version, but I had enough to even try it. PC-BSD looked fun to try, but it really just kept failing to install, unlucky me.
Opensuse - Well, it looked beautiful, but it simply would not work with my video card/monitor(not sure which one)...it simply could not be configured correctly for me and left me with weird colors on the edges of my screen.

Now, keep in mind, if I really bogged down I could have fixed a lot of these problems, but to me first impressions mean a lot.
My ideal distro would be a debian based distro that stayed up to date. KINDA what ubuntu is doing, except not so ungodly slow...and this for me just started with Dapper. With breezy my machine took 20 seconds to boot and flew. It now takes 40 seconds with all unnecessary fluff removed...and the desktop seems to lag a lot.
As for right now I use ubuntu and arch...I switch back and forth. I like arch's simplicity and speed...but some things are a pain to get working (IE - writing Udev rules and compiling kernels isnt my idea of fun)
as much as I am disappointed with ubuntus speed, its just packed with stuff I like. I like using GUI tools sometimes vs command line.

RAV TUX

June 23rd, 2006, 12:56 AM

SilverTab

June 23rd, 2006, 03:12 AM

Well, belive it or not, I'm posting this from DamnSmall Linux!

Turns out it comes with ndiswrapper... took a while to configure the wlan and everything, but damn this is impressive! :)

richbarna

June 23rd, 2006, 03:56 AM

Well, belive it or not, I'm posting this from DamnSmall Linux!

Turns out it comes with ndiswrapper... took a while to configure the wlan and everything, but damn this is impressive! :)

It IS, isn't it ? :D
I must admit that I am still amazed how so much speed and utilities can come in such a small package !

richbarna

June 23rd, 2006, 04:19 AM

you should try Dreamlinux XFCE Studio Edition:
Dreamlinux (http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/)

Hey Yozef, you convinced me, dream linux SE coming down :D
I'm going to give the media editing a run, I am currently looking to back up some stuff from a Sony video camera, lets see how I get on with it being recognised.

Just one more thing. Isn't the DreamLinux websit slick !?, I normally focus on the distros but the guys who designed that web deserve a medal.=D>

woedend

June 23rd, 2006, 04:35 AM

speak of the devil...i think i repartitioned one too many times bro....
my hard drive slowly and methodically ate itself... i mean, everything is dead. i have about 2/3 backup on DVD, but damn 100$ down the drain.
I think ill just throw ubuntu on when I get a new one installed and call it a day :).
luckily i have this ubiquity CD that I HATED, nearly broke it, but if i get past the HD failure at the bios i can luckily get into ubuntu this way hehe.

RAV TUX

June 24th, 2006, 08:33 PM

Hey Yozef, you convinced me, dream linux SE coming down :D
I'm going to give the media editing a run, I am currently looking to back up some stuff from a Sony video camera, lets see how I get on with it being recognised.

Just one more thing. Isn't the DreamLinux websit slick !?, I normally focus on the distros but the guys who designed that web deserve a medal.=D>

Dreamlinux does have the best website of any Distro, and I have to say that this is usually an indicator of how good thier Distro is. One exception dyne:bolic great Distro, not so good website.

RAV TUX

June 24th, 2006, 08:34 PM

please consider merging the thread below to avoid the hundreds of "Other Distros" threads.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1178244#post1178244

RAV TUX

July 27th, 2006, 10:26 PM

I downloaded and am burning the following Distros...I'll let everyone know how it goes, If anyone has any experience with any of these I would like to hear...

Slax-Killbill-5.1.7
Slax-popcorn-5.1.7
Kanotix-64-2-005-04-Lite
Arch-0.7.2
Kororaa-2005-beta2-r1-install
Blag-50000
Wolvix Desktop Edition 1.0.4
Wolvix Games Edition 1.0.4
Wolvix Media Edition 1.0.4
Slackware 10.2

RavenOfOdin

July 27th, 2006, 10:28 PM

Popcorn? Can I eat it? :D

RAV TUX

July 27th, 2006, 10:32 PM

Popcorn? Can I eat it? :D

If you can swallow a flashdrive.;)

http://www.slax.org/download.php

Special SLAX versions http://www.slax.org/gf/fish.pnghttp://www.slax.org/bg.png Some people prefer modified versions of SLAX, designed to provide some extra functionality. Even though SLAX is modular and allows people to extend it easily, I'm releasing these special modifications to help beginners use Linux. Here you can see some little examples of what miracles can be build on SLAX basis.

http://www.slax.org/ss/download/th_killbill.png (http://www.slax.org/screenshot.php?url=/ss/download/killbill.png&info=screenshot%20of%20SLAX%20KillBill%20Edition%2 05.1.7b) SLAX KillBill Edition v 5.1.7b
SLAX KB is a pocket operating system with the ability to run many Windows applications natively in Linux. It contains KDE, wine, dosbox and qemu.
[? (http://www.slax.org/doc_boot_iso_md5.php)] download208 MB : ftp (ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/linux/slax/SLAX-5.x/special-editions/slax-killbill-5.1.7b.iso) : http (http://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz/mirrors/slax/SLAX-5.x/special-editions/slax-killbill-5.1.7b.iso) : bittorrent (http://www.tlm-project.org/public/distributions/slax/SLAX-5.x/special-editions/slax-killbill-5.1.7b.iso.torrent) [? (http://www.slax.org/doc_boot_iso_md5.php#diff)] diff bsdiff not available yet [? (http://www.slax.org/doc_boot_iso_md5.php#md5)] md5sumfdd137358b1db15d672a507fcffbeb35

Minimalistic SLAX versions http://www.slax.org/gf/kdf.pnghttp://www.slax.org/bg.png These editions are very special in their size. One fits 128 MB USB Flash Keys and the other one fits even 50 MB creditcard cd. Be aware that these editions are heavily stripped down, you will miss a lot of libraries to run many SLAX modules.

http://www.slax.org/ss/download/th_popcorn.png (http://www.slax.org/screenshot.php?url=/ss/download/popcorn.png&info=screenshot%20of%20SLAX%20Popcorn%20Edition%20 5.1.7b) SLAX Popcorn Edition v 5.1.7b
SLAX PE is a pocket operating system which fits even 128MB USB Flash Drives. It contains only XFce desktop, Mozilla Firefox, beep-XMMS, Gaim, AbiWord.
[? (http://www.slax.org/doc_boot_iso_md5.php)] download115 MB : ftp (ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/linux/slax/SLAX-5.x/special-editions/slax-popcorn-5.1.7b.iso) : http (http://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz/mirrors/slax/SLAX-5.x/special-editions/slax-popcorn-5.1.7b.iso) : bittorrent (http://www.tlm-project.org/public/distributions/slax/SLAX-5.x/special-editions/slax-popcorn-5.1.7b.iso.torrent) [? (http://www.slax.org/doc_boot_iso_md5.php#diff)] diff bsdiff not available yet [? (http://www.slax.org/doc_boot_iso_md5.php#md5)] md5sum8c8c451694097aee1d5ddf09a20b2c18

RavenOfOdin

July 27th, 2006, 10:34 PM

If you can swallow a flashdrive.;)

Ouch. . .since metal touching mouth == bad, I guess I'll belay that order for salt and extra butter. ;)

RAV TUX

July 27th, 2006, 10:56 PM

Kanotix-64-2-005-04-Lite
Arch-0.7.2
Kororaa-2005-beta2-r1-install

were corrupt downloads, so no testing on these tonight.

RAV TUX

July 28th, 2006, 12:17 AM

Slax-Killbill-5.1.7
Slax-popcorn-5.1.7
Blag-50000

Just didn't work.

RAV TUX

July 28th, 2006, 12:18 AM

Wolvix Desktop Edition 1.0.4
Wolvix Games Edition 1.0.4
Wolvix Media Edition 1.0.4

Wolvix were all corrupt downloads.

Slackware 10.2

burning 4 slackware cd's now

bluej774

July 28th, 2006, 01:03 AM

I've had a lot of experience with Slax distros and I've found them to be quite useful and fun. Although I do think that it is getting a little outdated. My cousin uses Slackware and he swears by it.

rattlerviper

July 28th, 2006, 01:38 AM

I've had a lot of experience with Slax distros and I've found them to be quite useful and fun. Although I do think that it is getting a little outdated. My cousin uses Slackware and he swears by it.

I tried Slax about 6 or 7 months ago...I swore at it.

ezsit

July 28th, 2006, 01:25 PM

Slax-Killbill-5.1.7
Slax-popcorn-5.1.7
Kanotix-64-2-005-04-Lite
Arch-0.7.2
Kororaa-2005-beta2-r1-install
Blag-50000
Wolvix Desktop Edition 1.0.4
Wolvix Games Edition 1.0.4
Wolvix Media Edition 1.0.4
Slackware 10.2

If you're used to Ubuntu, then Blag-50000 will be the most comfortable and similar. Kanotix is great as a rescue tool and I love how well it runs from CD. Slax is ok, but if you need a great live cd, stick with Kanotix. I have not tried Wolvix, Kororaa, or Arch. Slackware is fine, but a pain to configure for the lazy, like me. I tried Openlab (a Slackware derived live cd that is full featured compared to Slax) and liked it very much.

bonzodog

July 28th, 2006, 01:35 PM

try using Zenwalk as well, it is derived from Slackware, (which incidentally is only weeks away from version 11!). There is a Zenlive CD as well.

kabus

July 28th, 2006, 01:53 PM

Arch-0.7.2

Don't bother downloading an image, just install from within Ubuntu:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Install_Arch_from_within_another_distro

K.Mandla

July 29th, 2006, 02:29 AM

Arch is one of my favorites. It's very speedy, and a good place to learn about how these things mesh at lower levels. Package management is a dream. It has a steep learning curve, but it's very rewarding. I keep it on hand when I want to perk up a machine ... like squeezing a few more frames-per-second out of WolfET.

Slack I only installed once or twice when I wanted to work with older laptops that needed the 2.4-series kernel. It feels a little odd to me, and I never got too deep into it. I hear it's rock-solid, if that's what you're after.

The others I haven't tried yet. Let us know how it goes!

:)

EDIT: I almost forgot Kororaa ... I only used the Live CD, to see XGL. After that, I left it alone. ;)

franklee

July 30th, 2006, 12:39 AM

Personally I love Slackware 10.2 but its manual config requirements throw some dark hours on the command line at all but the best of us. I LOVE SLACKWARE.

Im tempted to try slax kb simply to play with wine from the comfort of my memstick....but I dunnooooooooooooo

Got Slack?

dominicguy

August 9th, 2006, 05:42 AM

I have try all these distro and all 3 don't work network card..

but Ubuntu does...

:confused:

dyne:bolic kernel Modules

Module Size Used by
smbfs 64888 0
snd_seq_dummy 4868 0
snd_seq_oss 33408 0
snd_seq_midi_event 8320 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_pcm_oss 40864 0
snd_mixer_oss 19072 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq 53328 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 8972 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
ehci_hcd 31752 0
forcedeth 30860 0
sata_nv 10500 0
shpchp 38816 0
pci_hotplug 31164 1 shpchp
snd_hda_intel 19860 0
snd_hda_codec 138672 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm 81028 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer 25220 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 11016 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
unionfs 80032 1
ntfs 104180 1
usb_storage 73152 0

Ubuntu kernel Modules..

Module Size Used by
isofs 37688 0
udf 88452 0
rfcomm 40216 0
l2cap 26244 5 rfcomm
bluetooth 49892 4 rfcomm,l2cap
ipt_limit 2432 8
iptable_mangle 2944 0
ipt_LOG 6912 8
ipt_MASQUERADE 3456 0
ip_nat 19628 1 ipt_MASQUERADE
ipt_TOS 2560 0
ipt_REJECT 5632 1
ip_conntrack_irc 6768 0
ip_conntrack_ftp 7792 0
ipt_state 2048 6
ip_conntrack 51500 5 ipt_MASQUERADE,ip_nat,ip_conntrack_irc,ip_conntrac k_ftp,ipt_state
nfnetlink 6552 2 ip_nat,ip_conntrack
iptable_filter 3072 1
ip_tables 22400 8 ipt_limit,iptable_mangle,ipt_LOG,ipt_MASQUERADE,ip t_TOS,ipt_REJECT,ipt_state,iptable_filter
ppdev 9220 0
cpufreq_userspace 4696 0
cpufreq_stats 5636 0
freq_table 4740 1 cpufreq_stats
cpufreq_powersave 1920 0
cpufreq_ondemand 6428 0
cpufreq_conservative 7332 0
video 16260 0
tc1100_wmi 6916 0
sony_acpi 5644 0
pcc_acpi 12416 0
hotkey 11556 0
dev_acpi 11140 0
container 4608 0
button 6672 0
acpi_sbs 19980 0
battery 9988 1 acpi_sbs
ac 5252 1 acpi_sbs
i2c_acpi_ec 5120 1 acpi_sbs
sg 37920 0
sd_mod 19984 0
dm_mod 58936 1
md_mod 72532 0
lp 11844 0
ipv6 265728 6
tsdev 8000 0
snd_hda_intel 18964 2
snd_hda_codec 154672 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm_oss 53664 0
snd_mixer_oss 18688 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 89864 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 25220 1 snd_pcm
snd 55268 8 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_ oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 10208 2 snd
nvidia 4550772 20
agpgart 34888 1 nvidia
af_packet 22920 2
snd_page_alloc 10632 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
pcspkr 2180 0
rtc 13492 0
psmouse 36100 0
parport_pc 35780 1
parport 36296 3 ppdev,lp,parport_pc
serio_raw 7300 0
i2c_core 21904 2 i2c_acpi_ec,nvidia
usb_storage 74176 0
shpchp 45632 0
pci_hotplug 29236 1 shpchp
evdev 9856 1
ext3 135688 1
jbd 58772 1 ext3
ide_generic 1536 0
ohci_hcd 21892 0
ehci_hcd 34184 0
usbcore 130692 4 usb_storage,ohci_hcd,ehci_hcd
forcedeth 30732 0
ide_cd 33028 0
cdrom 38560 1 ide_cd
ide_disk 17664 4
generic 5124 0
amd74xx 15260 0 [permanent]
sata_nv 9732 0
libata 78992 1 sata_nv
scsi_mod 139496 4 sg,sd_mod,usb_storage,libata
thermal 13576 0
processor 23360 1 thermal
fan 4868 0
capability 5000 0
commoncap 7296 1 capability
vga16fb 13704 1
vgastate 10368 1 vga16fb
fbcon 42784 72
tileblit 2816 1 fbcon
font 8320 1 fbcon
bitblit 6272 1 fbcon
softcursor 2304 1 bitblit

-----------------------
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51G [GeForce 6100] (rev a2)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a2)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev a1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a1)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
03:07.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k Data/Fax Modem

dominicguy

August 9th, 2006, 05:44 AM

[-X I'm not leaving Ubuntu

:razz: this is just for my sis

rattlerviper

August 9th, 2006, 06:38 AM

PCLinuxOS comes with Madwifi. If your card is supported in Ubuntu I would think it would be there as well. You have to set up a new network connection through the control panel. Then use kwifimanager to connect. Shouldn't be a problem! Do you have a Atheros chip in your card? I do and it worked for me , it just isn't preturned on like dapper is, more like the way breezy was, you have to make the connection. In fact the wifi connection in PCLinuxOS can be easily turned on so it starts during the bootup process. Also I haven't had to use it so I'm not speaking from experience, but if ndiswrapper is needed the forums over there state that it can be done through a GUI tool rather than in the command line.

If your sister is new to Linux I would give PCLinusOS a second look. Download PCLinuxOS junior .93a or minime .93 you should have luck with either of those. Mineme is minimal, and you add what you want. Junior has most of what people want save firefox.

So now the key question...Why not Ubuntu. Does she not like the way it looks? Is it too much for her computer? Or you just wanted a different disto.

If you seriously need a different distro for her check out.
1. PCLinuxOS minime .93 has wifi card support (it's also light and fast)
2. Freespire the final just came out, and it has wifi support. also has CNR which is a easy way to download software with 1 click(costs 19.95 a year though)
3. Mandriva just worked with my wifi card
4. Xandros 4.0 (it'll cost you, but they claim it has wifi support, whereas I know the free one does not)

And yes, they are in the order of my preference for extremely easy linux distros with wifi support built in.

Oh yeah did I mention Ubuntu?

rattlerviper

August 9th, 2006, 06:49 AM

Oh, and if she has a realy old computer and still needs wifi support might I recomend DSL-N Damn Small Linux-Not. It too has Madwifi out of the box. You just need to enable the connection. It is roughly 100mb so it works well with older equipment.

dominicguy

August 9th, 2006, 06:49 AM

:-$ I wanted her to use one of these distro because they come with everything, they look nice and are very easy.

rattlerviper

August 9th, 2006, 04:06 PM

Those are indeed valid points...Uhmmm Not sure how to say it but The full edition of PCLinuxOS .93 is going to be coming out very soon. It will have everything you seem to want including the looks. It will have madwifi. Until then use junior or minime or Ubuntu. If she is still on windows PCLinuxOS would probably be the most "windows"like in terms of looks from the get go. Community over there is real quick to offer help as well.

GuitarHero

August 12th, 2006, 11:54 PM

I am very very pleased with ubuntu and just want to check out other distros just for informational sake. I have tried x/kubuntu, and open suse. I found xubuntu was too minimalistic, kubuntu was too bloated, and open suse was waaaay too bloated. I would like to try a kde dist with a less cluttered look/approach. Other gnome distros are welcome as well.

23meg

August 13th, 2006, 12:10 AM

Try SLAX, Arch Linux, Zenwalk, Vector Linux.

RAV TUX

August 13th, 2006, 12:24 AM

GuitarHero

August 13th, 2006, 12:31 AM

Whoa musix looks perfect for me. I think Ill try that and dreamlinux tomorrow.

WestAussieUbu

August 13th, 2006, 12:43 AM

So u haven't tried nUbuntu or Edubuntu ;)

Just kidding mate, i recommend Zenwalk. Or Even Fedora Core, if u strip out half the crap and make it a custom installation.

kerry_s

August 13th, 2006, 12:45 AM

If you want a kde distro with less bloat try one of pclinuxos mini's there's 2, minime(base kde) and junior(kde base +). I use minime cause i like selecting my own stuff to add so i can keep it lite. Here's where-> http://distrowatch.com/index.php?distribution=pclinuxos&month=all&year=all

kerry_s

August 13th, 2006, 12:47 AM

Also here's a good site to check out other distro's in action-> http://osvids.com/

rattlerviper

August 13th, 2006, 04:53 PM

PCLinuxOS...fast polished and uses Synaptic to manage RPM packages.

kabus

August 13th, 2006, 04:57 PM

I like Arch Linux (archlinux.org), 'a simple, lightweight Linux distribution'.

Eversmann

August 13th, 2006, 06:01 PM

No one mentioned Mandriva? very graphical, and easy to use.

uncreative

August 13th, 2006, 07:00 PM

I tried out MEPIS before I did this ubuntu install and it seemed pretty cool

uncreative

August 13th, 2006, 07:02 PM

Musix

Does this have an English translation that you know of?

kostkon

August 13th, 2006, 07:16 PM

Austrumi (http://cyti.latgola.lv/ruuni/index_en.html), good small linux distro...

zxee

August 13th, 2006, 10:31 PM

I'll put in another plug for mandriva. Not as good as ubuntu IMO but this http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03603#0 beta 1 release is worth a look and fits on one cd. You can get it in either kde or gnome.
If that's not your cup of tea-then try a x686 distro, the fox: http://www.foxlinux.org/index.php?sel_lang=english

linuxpenguin

August 15th, 2006, 09:26 AM

I just installed Gentoo not too long ago. So far I like it a lot!

(then again, I was used to Slackware, not Ubuntu - Ubuntu's what I use on my server).

RAV TUX

August 15th, 2006, 12:51 PM

Does this have an English translation that you know of?

yes, just type in the command upon boot for English or enable English with the Synaptic Package Manager.

If your speaking of the website, just select English.

richbarna

August 15th, 2006, 11:10 PM

vladozan

August 28th, 2006, 10:52 AM

I would recommend Freespire. It is ready out of the box and the CNR can be avoided through synaptic or just apt-get

NikoC

August 30th, 2006, 04:00 AM

I would definitely go with PClinuxOS. It's a good solid kde based distro and practically everything works out of the box.

Although I've got a run-of-the-mill nVidia card Dreamlinux would only give me 640 resolution and I also had problems with a oretty standard router.

I would have to agree on the PClinuxOS part: very nice and user friendly OS with a great control center! They have recently released new versions: Big Daddy 0.93a which is the 'fully' loaded version, a lighter version called Junior 0.93a and MiniMe 0.93a which allows you to build your 'own' OS with the apps you want.
http://www.pclinuxos.com

jethro10

September 28th, 2006, 04:43 AM

Hi, after 6 months, i'm having too many problems and want to try an alternative to Ubuntu, dual boot of course with Ubuntu.

Now I chose Ubuntu because it was big and I made no major changes.

What currently is a good second choice. I want to stick with Gnome. Just want it to be straightforward. Must have the ability to add the restricted formats codecs. Can't be Fedora cos it fails miserably on install.

Sensible community support.

Is there another choice ?

J

happy-and-lost

September 28th, 2006, 04:57 AM

OpenSUSE was pretty good last time I checked it out.

It's KDE by default, but there's nowt stopping you from installing GNOME.

You say you're having Ubuntu problems, anything we can help with? :)

tseliot

September 28th, 2006, 05:02 AM

I can recommend you PCLinux OS or Debian Etch

bluenova

September 28th, 2006, 05:27 AM

Freespire

jethro10

September 28th, 2006, 07:04 AM

OpenSUSE was pretty good last time I checked it out.

It's KDE by default, but there's nowt stopping you from installing GNOME.

You say you're having Ubuntu problems, anything we can help with? :)
Various. I am quite capable as well but fail miserably with it. And i've been runnig it for about 6 months now on a seperate PC, not with windows.

MP3 playing only sometimes and in some contexts.

Divx ok, xvid failing to play mostly.

My palm Treo syncs sometimes only, the wifes does not at all. (both fine under suse payfor trial we installed as a trial- now timed out and deleted)

Scanner should be compatible with the USB driver. Just fails with "scanner not found" error, whereas suse said what model it was, what file we needed and what to alter - now thats a lot better. Even following the HOWTO it still failed

RW dvd's fail to re-format, have to do it on the windows PC. Did work then just stopped about 3 months ago!

Random logout to the logon screen. perhaps twice a week.

Wifi card (Nativly compatible) fails even with NDIS

Large file, or lots of file copying to my NAS disk craps out, but the NAS, taken to work, copies humongous amounts of data just fine. Same with the FTP to the XBOX, works at work ok.

Now i'm fairly able and have edited config files, rebuilt software, updated all sorts but still not there. Looked thru forums, the net, followed lots of tutorials but to no avail.

I might give opensuse a go. Debian is too close to Ubuntu so I should try something different to that.

Generally and interestingly, I found suse gave more meaningfull error messages.
Ta
Jeff

Josh1

September 28th, 2006, 07:10 AM

Various. I am quite capable as well but fail miserably with it. And i've been runnig it for about 6 months now on a seperate PC, not with windows.

MP3 playing only sometimes and in some contexts.

Divx ok, xvid failing to play mostly.

My palm Treo syncs sometimes only, the wifes does not at all. (both fine under suse payfor trial we installed as a trial- now timed out and deleted)

Scanner should be compatible with the USB driver. Just fails with "scanner not found" error, whereas suse said what model it was, what file we needed and what to alter - now thats a lot better. Even following the HOWTO it still failed

RW dvd's fail to re-format, have to do it on the windows PC. Did work then just stopped about 3 months ago!

Random logout to the logon screen. perhaps twice a week.

Wifi card (Nativly compatible) fails even with NDIS

Large file, or lots of file copying to my NAS disk craps out, but the NAS, taken to work, copies humongous amounts of data just fine. Same with the FTP to the XBOX, works at work ok.

Now i'm fairly able and have edited config files, rebuilt software, updated all sorts but still not there. Looked thru forums, the net, followed lots of tutorials but to no avail.

I might give opensuse a go. Debian is too close to Ubuntu so I should try something different to that.

Generally and interestingly, I found suse gave more meaningfull error messages.
Ta
Jeff

There was a post by someone around somewhere where it said something like "If some major things doesnt work under ubuntu, but works with another distro, just use that other distro, dont fight it".
Try suse if everything you want to do works.
Goodluck,
- Josh

jethro10

September 28th, 2006, 08:20 AM

There was a post by someone around somewhere where it said something like "If some major things doesnt work under ubuntu, but works with another distro, just use that other distro, dont fight it".
Try suse if everything you want to do works.
Goodluck,
- Josh

Yup, and that why i'm trying......
But still leaving a partition for Edgy just in case :)
J

slimdog360

September 28th, 2006, 08:36 AM

Freespire
you have obviously never used freespire before. Its horrible.

I know you said gnome but mepis might be what your looking for, its kde, but of course you can install the gnome desktop if you wanted. It has all of the restricted codecs etc installed already. Its like Ubuntu only with all of the extra stuff already set up for you. Great distro.

prizrak

September 28th, 2006, 08:41 AM

you have obviously never used freespire before. Its horrible.

I know you said gnome but mepis might be what your looking for, its kde, but of course you can install the gnome desktop if you wanted. It has all of the restricted codecs etc installed already. Its like Ubuntu only with all of the extra stuff already set up for you. Great distro.

Bad idea, MEPIS is based on Ubuntu so any issues with Ubuntu are likely to come up with MEPIS. OpenSuSE is the best advice I seen so far.

OP,
You seem to be fairly knowledgeable, you should try one of the more advanced distro's with better customizeability.

jethro10

September 28th, 2006, 11:16 AM

Bad idea, MEPIS is based on Ubuntu so any issues with Ubuntu are likely to come up with MEPIS. OpenSuSE is the best advice I seen so far.

OP,
You seem to be fairly knowledgeable, you should try one of the more advanced distro's with better customizeability.

I was thinking suse because it is not a debian/Ubuntu based distribution. Your right, its different enough to possibly avoid the same problems yet big enough to be professional. Mind you, the forums are no where near as big, just been for a look now :)

I'm an IT person (windows) by profession and although I want to go linux at home I dont want too much fiddling. I get enough of it at work. At least something with a chance of working.
Ta

Jeff

fuscia

September 28th, 2006, 11:28 AM

maybe one of the BSDs?

gnomeuser

September 28th, 2006, 11:55 AM

Most of the major distros have new releases coming out during the next month so don't discount Fedora they to get better.

Anyways, Mandriva has a GNOME version of their distro and the 2007 version is coming out shortly, Fedora Core has version 6 coming out in 2 weeks, Ubuntu Edgy should follow within the next month.

But if you want the absolute best GNOME distro that fits your needs go for SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, it comes with codec support, you get access to the awesome tech support from Novell, you get XGL out of the box for effects and to top the deal off YaST will help you with any configuration job you need in a nice GUI environment.

Now it's not a perfect distro you will have to suffer the security malimplementation that is AppArmor and you will have to pay to get updates (50$ for a year, 130$ for 3 years - for the entire platform that is an amazing deal). It is however free to test and you get a month trial period to try it out.

That's my recommendation given your needs.

plb

September 28th, 2006, 12:14 PM

debian or opensuse

Ramses de Norre

September 28th, 2006, 12:56 PM

Arch Linux? I've heard very good things about that but haven't got the time to try it out myself yet.

I'm dual booting with Zenwalk now but that's not really an option I'm afraid (very bad packaging system and almost no packaged software available).

Edgy maybe? (Dapper fixed a lot of issues I had with Breezy)

AndyCooll

September 28th, 2006, 02:22 PM

How about trying some of the distros mentioned here:

Other OS Talk (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=147)

:cool:

H.E. Pennypacker

September 28th, 2006, 05:38 PM

Try Zenwalk. It comes with XFCE, but you can use Gnome.

bobbybobington

September 28th, 2006, 05:41 PM

Try giving opensuse with gnome a whirl.

pelle.k

September 28th, 2006, 06:27 PM

Try Zenwalk. It comes with XFCE, but you can use Gnome.
As Ramses de Norre said, their packaging system isn't really worth it, though it's a beutiful distro.

Archlinux is not really recommended unless you like configuring your system yourself. I use archlinux besides ubuntu, and it's really great, but it requires some DIY. This is of course great if you like to tweak your system, but it's not an "out of the box" distro.

Go with one of the giants. suse/mandriva etc. Do remember that edgy is out within the month though... :)

ice60

September 28th, 2006, 07:07 PM

OpenSUSE was pretty good last time I checked it out.

It's KDE by default, but there's nowt stopping you from installing GNOME.

i think they switched to gnome by default now. anyway, during the install you have the options of gnome or KDE.

i'd try dreamlinux, it uses apt, but uses xfce not gnome.

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=701&slide=5

Compucore

September 28th, 2006, 09:42 PM

How about Sun Microsystems Solaris 10 for free download directly from them. http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp Either 5 CD's or 1 DVD depending on which one you want to burn in. I haven't tried it yet from SUN. But I had a chance of using Solaris 8 or 9 on a friends Ultra 5 and ultra 10 sun computers at his place. They do have it for the standard PC there to downlad. Check that one out as well. I'm in the midst of installing Debian on a SGI system over ehre for a friend of mind. WIsh Ubuntu would have made an equivilant for teh MIPS processor. But oh well Can't complain though that it is on the regular computers as well as the PPC's.

Compucore

jethro10

September 29th, 2006, 06:12 AM

Edgy maybe? (Dapper fixed a lot of issues I had with Breezy)

That of course, is another option. I've learned a lot about Ubuntu and feel comfortable with it.
My plan now seems to be wait till edgy, if that is not right go opensuse.
somedays I feel like giving a linux techie a free weekend away at my house and pay them a few hundred dollars just to learn first hand what i'm doing wrong. OR maybe its not wrong and what i've got is as good as it gets with my setup.

J

_simon_

September 29th, 2006, 06:30 AM

slimdog360

September 29th, 2006, 06:51 AM

Bad idea, MEPIS is based on Ubuntu so any issues with Ubuntu are likely to come up with MEPIS.

For as long Ive been using mepis i havent had any of the issues with Ubuntu bother me in mepis.

prizrak

September 29th, 2006, 09:28 AM

For as long Ive been using mepis i havent had any of the issues with Ubuntu bother me in mepis.

They switched very recently not sure if they even released the Ubuntu based version yet. I mean if the OP has time and feels like trying it out he/she is more than welcome to :)

Anonii

September 29th, 2006, 09:31 AM

Debian sarge, FOR GREAT JUSTICE! If you want something stable.

Debian etch, FOR GREAT JUSTICE! If you dont have problem with your PC if its 95% stable, and not 100%.

tagra123

September 29th, 2006, 09:36 AM

Fedora isn't bad but it takes forever to download.

I like ubuntu/debian apt-get much better than yum.

pay

September 29th, 2006, 09:39 AM

You can install Apt in fedora though.

_simon_

September 29th, 2006, 11:06 AM

From what I have heard and read, Freespire is the easiest 1st step from windows to linux.

http://freespire.org/
Screenshots: http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Screenshots

I've not tried it myself but one you might consider?

Out of interest I thought I'd give the freespire live cd a try and to be honest I'm pleasenlty suprised. Ok the Live CD took forever to fully load but it's detected the correct resolution, and all my partitions, so I have full access to my ubuntu /home and even network shares and it's all responding quite well.

Having only ever heard of CNR (click n run) before I'm also suprised with it, it's like synaptic with a web layout which includes reviews for the various software. I also wasn't aware that CNR is now free to both linspire and freespire, so no annual subscriptions. It lists both free and commercial software that you need to pay for.

It's definetly worth a try if you're struggling with ubuntu and looking for something else to try or just fancy a change. Personally I'll play with this live cd a bit more but will stick with ubuntu as I'm still happy with it.

prizrak

September 29th, 2006, 12:35 PM

Debian sarge, FOR GREAT JUSTICE! If you want something stable.

Debian etch, FOR GREAT JUSTICE! If you dont have problem with your PC if its 95% stable, and not 100%.
Considering that one of the requirements is low configuration efforts Debian wouldn't be the best choice. Sure it's not as difficult as it used to be but it still takes a good chunk of time to configure.

Anonii

September 29th, 2006, 01:01 PM

Considering that one of the requirements is low configuration efforts Debian wouldn't be the best choice. Sure it's not as difficult as it used to be but it still takes a good chunk of time to configure.
Actually, I tried the current version too. The installer was easy as ****, it had automatic partitioning (even for the advanced scheme of having /etc, /usr, etc. on different partitions), and an flawless dialog-based install, and a perfect hardware matching. The sound was ok from the start. The only "hard" things I found, is that they have no forum like this (I just saw the community thing). Well, it misses Synaptic and other GUI configuration tools, but I have never used them so I dont really know the difference. Anyway, wrong idea, sorry.

Spif

September 29th, 2006, 01:50 PM

I have had very good experiences running SLED 10 on my laptop. I find it a bit more buggy than Ubuntu (which means it is pretty bug free, although I did encounter one that is really annoying), but multimedia and other things work out of box unlike Ubuntu. SLED 10 also has a lot of useful applications installed by default.

Only real minus is that it uses software that is not open-source.

dca

September 29th, 2006, 01:58 PM

Do not go w/ openSuSE... It's very dumbed-down. All the goodies (WiFI drivers, add-ons, etc) are taken out. You're better off getting the enterprise ed of SuSE to get the stuff everyone liked about it. Not to mention, I don't know if they fixed the problem w/ the updater. You had to meander around their forum(s) to find this half-@$$ed fix to get your updates and read hack reports to get DVD support, Flash, etc. However, openSuSE now gives the option during install to apply KDE, GNOME, or XFCE desktop(s)... Ubuntu is still my fave (even though all the distros have bugs) for GNOME, SimplyMEPIS is way better than Kubuntu (more polished & stable) for KDE, and as far as XFCE goes, I only install it if it's absolutely necessary (very old PC or laptop) and I use a distro that I can (Debian) throw the XFCE on top of after install...

RAV TUX

October 9th, 2006, 10:20 PM

try:

dyne:bolic

Aquamorph

Knoppix 5.0.1

Zenwalk

Zeta (based on BeOS)

PC-BSD

and don't fear the HURD

Minyaliel

October 10th, 2006, 08:46 AM

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but Elive is a _very_ good distro. It's not Gnome, but I don't think you're going to miss Gnome after seeing Enlightenment 17 on this system. I have not encountered a single problem with Elive since I installed it onto my laptop. It's much faster and much prettier than Ubuntu.

John.Michael.Kane

October 11th, 2006, 07:36 PM

Theres also LFS. (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/)

dca

October 12th, 2006, 04:05 PM

You know, the more I think of it going back to one of the original posts as what's not compatible or working: another distro to try, may be one of the pay for use distros a' la SLED, Linspire, Xandros, etc. That way if things don't work off the bat you can call their support and it still costs WAY less than XP..?? In the onset, (long time ago - galaxy far far away) I too was put-off by all the extra config needed when installing Linux for desktop/laptop use versus enterprise installs... Once you figure out the missing codecs needed, you have to add crap to get the WiFi card working and all that.

Compucore

October 12th, 2006, 08:37 PM

Out of curiousity has anyone here tried Solaris 10 by any chance?? I've seen it avialable for download for the X86 processors. I even tried it on a Sun Ultra 5 and ultra 10 at a friends places. It is just as good as Ubuntu is. Fine it is not exactly like the ubuntu interface that we are all used to here in the forum.

Compucore

RAV TUX

October 13th, 2006, 12:57 AM

kopilo

October 13th, 2006, 12:06 PM

RedHat is fairly stable and has been around for a long time. Not exactly like ubuntu but it still has the Gnome option (well to my knowledge). However because Fedora doesn't work, probably want to stay away from that option.

ezsit

October 14th, 2006, 05:44 PM

Give BLAG a shot.

http://www.blagblagblag.org/download/

BLAG is a Fedora Core 5 based, single installable CD with most all the basics. The default desktop is Gnome and you'll have access to all the Fedora software out on the net.

RAV TUX

November 4th, 2006, 02:29 AM

NeoLithium

November 4th, 2006, 02:38 AM

RAV TUX

November 4th, 2006, 02:44 AM

Even though I love ubuntu; I'm starting to get that twitchy finger where I wanna try some more distro's....guess I'll just have to make myself some time to tinker around...especially when I want to get try a few that seem to need Stephen Hawking to help out with your install ;)

good luck and have fun.

Suggest you start with KNOPPIX 5.0.1 8.0GB "Maxi" DVD

and Wolvix Hunter

also Aquamorph is quite nice.

K.Mandla

November 16th, 2006, 03:53 PM

Hey, this Slax module system is fun. It's got shell scripts that install to a USB drive, and provided you have enough space left, you can dump whatever programs you want into the /modules folder and they're automatically configured and installed on boot.

It's also got the newest nvidia drivers, and if you go with the popcorn version you get the XFCE desktop. You can throw Armagetron Advanced in there too. I like this one. I might make myself a live USB so I can take it to work and use a proper operating system in my down time. ;)

Zaen

November 30th, 2006, 12:22 AM

I have an old laptop Acer, 75mhz pentium one, 16megs of ram, floppy drive, no hard drive, and a pcmcia card that can store around 35 megs of data. (yes, it is pcmcia storage) that I would like to get up basically for taking were-ever, and getting beat up with no worries.

I don't think it is possible to get ubuntu up on it much less a good idea, but I don't know what OS would be good to use. I'm looking preferably for a floppy live distro, with a basic text editor (like joe or nano) that boots quickly.

Command line is fine (expected with a floppy distro), preferably simple.

I'm just looking for ideas, and any are welcome and appreciated
Thanks

3rdalbum

November 30th, 2006, 06:54 AM

MenuetOS is a floppy-based operating system, with a GUI (and it contains a text editor)

Circus-Killer

November 30th, 2006, 06:57 AM

okay, i've never tried the distro that i'm about to suggest, so dont flame me if i'm wrong on this one, but you could always try Damn Small Linux (DSL).

Apparently it was designed to run off a flash drive if i'm not mistaken, but as i said, i could very well be mistaken.

jdhore

November 30th, 2006, 03:13 PM

Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux might be good ideas for you

popacsek

December 3rd, 2006, 08:18 AM

Hi,

I'm a Gentoo user. I want to switch to an another distro, because I'm tired waiting for compiling packages. I've run some benchmarks, and I found that the gcc-4.1.1 (used in many distros, like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) produces significantly slower and biger code than gcc-3.4.6 (~25% slower, ~5% biger). So, I decided to choose a distro that has the older gcc version. Some of the candidates are Zenwalk and FreeBSD.
I've read about some problems, like stability issues in Zenwalk, and USB automount problems in FreeBSD.
Please help me choosing a new distro!

RAV TUX

December 3rd, 2006, 02:08 PM

RAV TUX

December 3rd, 2006, 02:10 PM

slimdog360

December 5th, 2006, 05:31 AM

to be honest Ive had some great success with the server install of Ubuntu, both with speed and stability.

the packages I install
- kde-core
- x-window-system-core
- kdm

then start it up and add a few other things at my preference. I get a massive speed boost by doing this.

Circus-Killer

December 5th, 2006, 05:41 AM

i hate to be a typical ubuntu user and recommend ubuntu, but ermmm......what were you expecting? seriously though, i too used gentoo, for quite a while, but like you got sick of compiling. i rather use a system than build one.

well, i would recommend ubuntu to you. ubuntu is straight-up solid reliable. and i recommend it to novices and experts alike. unlike other user-friendly distros (mandriva, fedora) that fallover the second you stray from the default, ubuntu handles an unbelievable amount of customization and control.

this is why i love ubuntu. its easy enough for the beginner, but the expert will have no problems getting done the arb this and that which he needs to get done. not sure if that made sense, but you get what i am saying.

ddbann

December 6th, 2006, 10:18 PM

I downloaded the Big Daddy version of PCLinuxOS and having Flash installed on it without all the headache I went through with to get it to work on Edgy was really nice i have to say.

the good thing is free is free and i guess i can come back to ubuntu if i want to. i got 6.10 burnt on a disc.

thanks for all the support i got here and the welcome i got into the linux world. i think linux rocks M$ way hard.

jordanmthomas

December 6th, 2006, 10:30 PM

Hopefully you'll still hang around the forums and help when you can. I have switched to other distros as well, but I like the ideas behind Ubuntu so I have stayed to help.

Also, I'm sorry you had a hard time with flash...it was pretty simple for me to install.

At least you're still on the right team.

aysiu

December 6th, 2006, 10:32 PM

If you liked Ubuntu, you might want to take a look at Mepis, too, which also includes Flash and a lot of other proprietary software.

The difference is that Mepis is based on Ubuntu (and uses Ubuntu repositories), whereas PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva.

By the way, I moved your thread to the correct forum.

Cariboo1938

December 6th, 2006, 10:39 PM

Hopefully you'll still hang around the forums and help when you can. I have switched to other distros as well,... Hi jordanmthomas,
just out of curiosity:-k , what would be an alternative to Ubuntu or the advantage to switch and why?
I'm not a programmer or developer, just an average computer user doing Text, Pictures, Music, Internet, e-mail.
The only struggle I have is to get "packet writing" working as it does under Windows in Nero's InCD.
But this is not Ubuntu specific, I tried this under Libranet last year and under Knoppix the year before. I think with more patience I'll get it in Ubuntu with the help of the great folks gathered here.

kerry_s

December 6th, 2006, 10:40 PM

We all believe in using what fits you best and most of us use several distro's on a single computer & switch between them from time to time. You don't have to use ubuntu to help others with linux problems. I haven't visted pclinux forum in awile but you never know i might just pop in and tease you.LOL, Have fun, as long as your happy we don't care what you use. ;)

kazuya

December 7th, 2006, 06:59 PM

same here, although, I use Zenwalk more which is slack-based, I love the Ubuntu community greatly and the desire for innovation and ease of things. And I forsee Ubuntu continuosly rising with the remaining distros doing the same.

I may try linuxmint out some more as I am starting to set it up on other newbs machines.

flirting with danger, I guess.

finferflu

December 7th, 2006, 07:04 PM

I'm dowloading Ulteo right now (very sloooooooow download), and I'll see if it fits my mother's needs! I know it's based on kubuntu, so it must be good stuff! :)

Hendrixski

December 7th, 2006, 07:16 PM

I'd be interested to see what the non-Debian-based distro's look like these days. Perhaps I'll try Fedora sometime.

I should probably give a spin on some of the enterprise Linux distro's, like SuSe or Red Hat Enterprise, because I use Linux at work, and enterprise operating systems are the big demand in big businesses. One of my coworkers is going to be doing a prototype for a customer using Oracle's new Unbreakable Linux package. I can't wait to see that.

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 04:01 AM

Hi everybody,

the holidays are coming, thus this means more time to tinker with pc's :D

I'm in search of a linux distro that only uses as much as 900Mb (doesn't need to be forever on my harddisk, just for learning linux), and is a bit harder than Kubuntu.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

EDIT:
i have these already on my list:
- DSL
- Vector Linux
- Puppy Linux
- Arch

Iarwain

kerry_s

December 12th, 2006, 04:37 AM

Hmmm 900mb, i guess your not looking for a full distro, most require at least 3 gig's to install.

I think maybe you should try your hand at going custom, i'm sure you heard about the command-line/server install & building up from there. Once you learn to build your system to you, you might not want anything else. There is alot of options when you go custom.

Other wise just search through distrowatch and look for any distro that's not 700 mb. -> http://distrowatch.com/

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 04:49 AM

I'm looking at DSL atm,
but i don't know how to search for a distro that is <700Mb on distrowatch.

Is that even possible, and if so, could you show me?

Iarwain

mips

December 12th, 2006, 04:52 AM

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Theres also Vector Linux which should be able to fit under 900MB.

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 04:57 AM

Hiya mips,

i know the DSL link, and am looking (meaning: thinking about) to use it.

My question was if it was possible to search for <700Mb distro's on distrowatch..

Iarwain

mips

December 12th, 2006, 05:21 AM

Use the distrowatch search at the bottom left of the page and type the following: "mini distro" do not leave out the " ".

Here is a list of mini distros:
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Mini_Distributions/

mips

December 12th, 2006, 05:26 AM

http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/467

weatherman

December 12th, 2006, 05:28 AM

learn linux?
go for linux from scratch!
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lfs

foofy

December 12th, 2006, 06:20 AM

Try mini-linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minilinux) I think its just what your after.

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 06:49 AM

learn linux?
go for linux from scratch!
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lfs

Hi,
the reason i don't try LFS is because i need about 5Gig free for that,
and i only have 900Mb i can spare..

EDIT:
and what about *BSD ?

How would that work?

Iarwain

mips

December 12th, 2006, 07:32 AM

Hi,
EDIT:
and what about *BSD ?

How would that work?

Iarwain

It all depends on what you are going to install. If you are going to want X & a DE i think you might not have enough space.

Don't you have a spare HD lying around somewhere ?

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/install.html#NEED-TO-RUN
3.4. What do I need in order to run FreeBSD? For versions prior to 5.X, you will need a 386 or better PC, with 5 MB or more of RAM and at least 60 MB of hard disk space. The FreeBSD installation process requires somewhat more memory so in practice, 16 MB of RAM is a minimum requirement for a standalone FreeBSD system.
For FreeBSD 5.X and later you will need a 486 or better PC, with 24 MB or more of RAM and at least 150 MB of hard disk space.
All versions of FreeBSD can run with a low end MDA graphics card but to run X11R6, a VGA or better video card is needed.
See also Chapter 4 (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/hardware.html).

navneeth

December 12th, 2006, 07:45 AM

How about Puppy Linux (http://puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1)? :)

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 07:47 AM

Thanks mips!

For the extra hdd, i'm on a laptop now, and i'd like to keep it portable :D
Should i be able to resize my partitions, it would be able to get around 5Gig free.

Problem is: the partitions don't want to resize :?

Iarwain

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 07:51 AM

How about Puppy Linux (http://puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1)? :)

Added to my list ;)

Cheers!

EDIT:
What about Gentoo and Slackware?

Iarwain

Sef

December 12th, 2006, 09:03 AM

Check out Deli Linux (http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/).

From Deli Linux:

DeLi Linux stands for "Desktop Light" Linux. It is a Linux Distribution for old computers, from 486 to Pentium MMX 166 or so. It's focused on desktop usage. It includes email clients, graphical web browser, an office package with word processor and spreadsheet, and so on. A full install, including XOrg and development tools, needs not more than 350 MB of harddisk space.

The trick is, that DeLi Linux uses only "lightweight" alternative software. If you are looking for the newest KDE, GNOME or Mozilla, DeLi Linux will not make you happy. The test computer is a 486 laptop with 16 MB RAM, and all apps which comes with DeLi Linux are running smoothly.

mips

December 12th, 2006, 09:28 AM

Problem is: the partitions don't want to resize :?

Why not, what seems to be the problem ?

Maybe include a screenshot of Gparted/QTParted of your HD.

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 09:51 AM

The way how my partitions are organized :D

See the attachment

Iarwain

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 09:52 AM

Check out Deli Linux (http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/).

From Deli Linux:

Hiya Sef,

Thanks for the link, but i don't think that Deli is what i am after..

I want a distro that requires some tweaking (may be quite some tweaking) before it "Just Works" :D

Iarwain

tommcd

December 12th, 2006, 11:28 AM

I tried installing Fedora Core 6 on my E-machines T1840 test box (Intel IM845GL motherboard). I got half way through the 1st CD when I got an error message about 'anaconda' having a major hissy fit. The computer then abruptly shut down. This happened with both the graphical and text based installers. A google search revealed this is a common problem going back to at least FC3.

bonzodog

December 12th, 2006, 12:58 PM

Looking at that disk, it's obvious to me that you have created the maximum allowed 4 primary partitions on your sata disk.

however, the partition setup looks a little..messed up.

Here's my suggestion: back up ALL data that you want to keep off the laptop onto a DVD or CDROM.

- Resize the ntfs disk to 30GB, it stays as it is in sda1.
- Erase all other partitions.

-Create sda5, 6, and 7, all logical partitions. It will place these Logical partitions inside an extended primary called 'Sda2'.
Linux will boot happily off a logical disk.

- Sda5 should be an ext3 linux root, at 20GB.
- Sda 6 should be a 1GB swap (or even 500mb - you should ALWAYS have a swap on the disk, Just In Case.)
- Sda 7 should then use the rest of the disk (unless you want more than one linux distro.) Again, use the ext3 FS. Make this mountable as /home. You can store your data in here and should never need to format it again, unless you want to change the partitions around.

Oh, and for distro selections - you want tweaking, eh?

My suggestions ; Slackware, Zenwalk (slack based, xfce default desk), or Arch linux. Arch builds stuff as it goes along, but has a very clever package manager that leaves apt in the dust. it also requires you to do some CLI work to get it working as you like. Ideal for learning the CLI and losing that fear of what might happen.

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 01:15 PM

Hi bonzodog,

i know it's messed up :D
you should see my "server" hdd layout then :cool:

Anyways, thanks for the suggestions!

Will probabely do this during the weekend or such, right now i'm in exams :D

Iarwain

BarfBag

December 12th, 2006, 01:26 PM

Mepis might work. Not sure how big it is or how much space it requires (probably as much as Kubuntu, since it's based off of it), but it's a little harder then Kubuntu. For me, it was way harder. Nothing ever worked. I gave up. Miss the speed and stability, though. ](*,)

mips

December 12th, 2006, 01:46 PM

L
however, the partition setup looks a little..messed up.

Just to add to what bonzodog said.

When you repartition your drive you might want to consider creating a seprate root partition (/) and home partition (/home). This allows you to keep your data seperate from the OS. So when you ever want to reinstall the OS or upgrade it you don't have to really worry about your data as it reides on a seperate partition. The root (/) partition does not need to be bigger than 10GB. (/home) should be almost the rest of the drive but leave a bit of space for your swap and testing partition.

Have you considered using vmware server to install other os'. This mean you boot up in ubuntu and run your other os' in a virtual environment. Pretty neat if you ask me.

tkjacobsen

December 12th, 2006, 02:00 PM

Go for gentoo. It's a really good learning experience.. And it can be as minimal as you like..

It also has very good docs/howtos

kerry_s

December 12th, 2006, 02:02 PM

Hiya mips,

i know the DSL link, and am looking (meaning: thinking about) to use it.

My question was if it was possible to search for <700Mb distro's on distrowatch..

Iarwain

-> http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Old+computers&origin=All&basedon=All&desktop=All&architecture=ix86&status=Active
-> http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/467
-> http://www.cotse.com/miniunix.htm

aysiu

December 12th, 2006, 02:04 PM

Moved the thread to Other OS Talk.

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 03:59 PM

I'm thinking of doing most of it this evening :D

So,
how would this sound?

30G for windows (need that much for my games)
5G for / (just keeping it at Feisty testing)
5OOMb for swap (got 2G ram)
25G for my /home (might make it 35)
and the rest for testing?

Or should i make like 50G for my home? (i have quite a collection of music that i like to tag along.. 23G big :cool: :D)

Iarwain

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 04:16 PM

double post

Iarwain

mips

December 12th, 2006, 04:25 PM

1. 30GB Windows NTFS Primary partition
2. 81GB (rest of drive) Extended partion.
Inside extended partition create
3. 10GB (/) Root partition (or 7.5GB)
4. 60GB (/home) Home partition
5. 10GB Testing Partition
6. 1GB Swap Partition

This should take up your entire HD.

My own (/) is about 4GB and I would rather ensure it does not get full so i set it to 10GB. 5GB or 7.5GB should also be ok if you 'know' it's going to stay small. 7.5GB would be a good compromise though.

10GB is fine for testing, you could fit 3 full size distros in there easily.

I usually have my swap at 2x my RAM size. Not that it gets used that often.

I'm thinking of doing most of it this evening :D

So,
how would this sound?

30G for windows (need that much for my games)
5G for / (just keeping it at Feisty testing)
5OOMb for swap (got 2G ram)
25G for my /home (might make it 35)
and the rest for testing?

Or should i make like 50G for my home? (i have quite a collection of music that i like to tag along.. 23G big :cool: :D)

Iarwain

mips

December 12th, 2006, 04:29 PM

Have you considered vmware server ?

Iarwain ben-adar

December 12th, 2006, 05:03 PM

Vmware..

it is an option, and the more i think of it, the more it is a good choice.

But i need to format my hdd, because the current layout = **** :D

Iarwain

Iarwain ben-adar

December 13th, 2006, 03:17 PM

I'm going to format my drive..

Wish me luck!

btw, this is the "lay-out"

35G for Windows
76G extended partition with:
- 7,5G for /
- 50G for /home
- 1G swap
- Rest for playing :cool:

Iarwain

Iarwain ben-adar

December 13th, 2006, 05:47 PM

Part 1:

This is what i already have:

Installed Windows, configured everything but keyboard (need azerty) Got it right :D
Installed Kubuntu 6.? (installed pretty much everything that i transfered from my apt/archives,
and now got an unusable sytem :cool:
(some kernel panics, going to try some more tomorrow)

and got partition for Arch (did not install yet)

So far only Windows has wireless, and 3D acceleration..

Tomorrow is a new day, and maybe i will find some time to tinker the machine.

Anyone has a tip as to why i get kernel panic? (pc said something about not being able to mount the root fs)

Iarwin

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 05:05 AM

Unfortunately, much as I've enjoyed having Ubuntu on my laptop...I'm going to be forced to reformat it. Too many things just aren't compatible including my sound and wireless cards. After spending several long nights getting my wireless card to work (forcing some drivers using ndiswrapper) they finally stopped working. The systems group at my university is also unable to configure my laptop for the school networks, which is really terrible since I'm a CS major.

At any rate, I really love Ubuntu...especially the philosophy, but I desperately need to find a distro that doesn't require that I try to force my computer to fit it...but rather is mostly compatible with my machine as-is. I guess I need a distro that's a bit more friendly to machines designed specifically to work for Windows and nothing but Windows :(

I'm open to suggestions or links to articles about various distros. I'm searching for things as we speak, but any help would be appreciated :)

I still have Ubuntu on my desktop, at least...and it's working great

yabbadabbadont

December 15th, 2006, 05:15 AM

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=308996

Try that, either the live cd or dvd version, and see how well it works with your laptop. If it works well, then you can install it onto the harddrive. People have been reporting that it works well with laptops that have problems with other distributions.

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 01:08 PM

Downloaded it and about to give it a try. Thanks for the recommendation :)

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 01:52 PM

I booted up the live cd, but unfortunately it isn't detecting my wireless or my sound. Does that mean it wouldn't detect it if I installed it?

TecnoVM64

December 15th, 2006, 02:14 PM

What's your sound card?, mine's Intel High Definition Audio and I solved compiling alsa with the patch for the conexant thing (apparently that's the real name of intel hda), now the patch is included in the new alsa-driver and compiling it doesn't take more than 5 minutes :)

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 02:16 PM

Yep, that's mine too. snd_hda or something like that :)

My wireless card is a broadcom, however, which I guess means that it's going to fight every distro of Linux I try to use.

qamelian

December 15th, 2006, 02:26 PM

Yep, that's mine too. snd_hda or something like that :)

My wireless card is a broadcom, however, which I guess means that it's going to fight every distro of Linux I try to use.

Which Broadcom card? My laptop has a 4306 which works just fine after using bcm43xx-fwcutter to extract the firmware from the Windows driver.

kerry_s

December 15th, 2006, 02:40 PM

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 02:50 PM

Which Broadcom card? My laptop has a 4306 which works just fine after using bcm43xx-fwcutter to extract the firmware from the Windows driver.

Broadcom 4311

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 02:53 PM

How are we suppose to recommend something when you gave no information on what the hell your using,specs,something. There could already be someone using the same machine, but were not mind readers here, you got to give some info.

The machine I'm using contains the following:
AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core
ATI Radeon Xpress 1150
Broadcom 4311 wireless card
aplay -l tells me my soundcard is an HDA ATI SB [HDA Generic]

drokmed

December 15th, 2006, 03:01 PM

Do you still have a windows partition installed on it? If so, boot up Windows, and get the hardware list from there.

On XP:
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager

There you can find out all the hardware details you need. Write it down. Then post it here.

As for other distros, the suse 10.2 installer is incredibly robust, and will most likely detect ALL your hardware. However, you will then be stuck in the rpm world, which has a serious lack of easy to get apps, and more importantly, doesn't have the community support forums like ubuntu enjoys.

mips

December 15th, 2006, 03:53 PM

The machine I'm using contains the following:
AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core
ATI Radeon Xpress 1150
Broadcom 4311 wireless card
aplay -l tells me my soundcard is an HDA ATI SB [HDA Generic]

What brand & model laptop is that ? Someone else here might just have the exact same as you & could have things working...

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 04:25 PM

A Gateway MX6448 Notebook. Sorry about that

TecnoVM64

December 15th, 2006, 07:50 PM

Dude, just get the latest alsa-driver from alsa-project.org
Uncompress anywhere and do the classic things "./configure ; make ; sudo make install" there you are, perfect sound.
Then just install ndiswrapper as this tutorial says:
http://wiki.waningsun.net/index.php?title=Dell_E1405_%26_Linux_HOWTO

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 08:36 PM

I've tried compiling the new alsa drivers before, but I always get errors during the make and make install parts of the process. Is that normal? I get 2 errors and 1 error respectively.

mips

December 15th, 2006, 09:02 PM

Paste the output of "./configure ; make ; sudo make install" here. you are being very vague and people wont be able to assist you. We cannot smell whats going on, you have to tell us.

StormGuy

December 15th, 2006, 11:48 PM

This is what I get when I run ./configure ; make ; make install
for the alsa drivers:

checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
checking whether gcc needs -traditional... no
checking for current directory... /home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a
checking cross compile...
checking for directory with kernel source... /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/build
checking for directory with kernel build...
checking for kernel version... 2.6.17-10-generic
checking for GCC version... Kernel compiler: gcc 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5) Used compiler: gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5)
checking for built-in ALSA... "no"
checking for existing ALSA module... "yes"
checking for Red Hat kernel... "auto"
checking for Red Hat kernel... "no"
checking for SUSE kernel... "auto"
checking for SUSE kernel... "no"
checking to modify of kernel linux/kmod.h... "no"
checking for kernel linux/compiler.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/pm.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/spinlock.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/irq.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/threads.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/rwsem.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/gameport.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/devfs_fs_kernel.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/highmem.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/workqueue.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/dma-mapping.h... "yes"
checking for kernel asm/hw_irq.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/device.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/jiffies.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/compat.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/adb.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/cuda.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/pmu.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/moduleparam.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/syscalls.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/firmware.h... "yes"
checking for kernel module symbol versions... "yes"
checking for PCI support in kernel... "yes"
checking for I2C driver in kernel... module
checking for firmware loader... yes
checking for input subsystem in kernel... yes
checking for directory to store kernel modules... /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound
checking for verbose printk... on
checking for debug level... none
checking for ISA support in kernel... "no"
checking for processor type... x86_64
checking for 32bit compat support... "yes"
checking for SMP... "yes"
checking for Video device support in kernel... "yes"
checking for ISA PnP driver in kernel... yes
checking for PnP driver in kernel... yes
checking for Kernel ISA-PnP support... "no"
checking for Kernel ISA-PnP module support... "no"
checking for strlcpy... "yes"
checking for snprintf... "yes"
checking for vsnprintf... "yes"
checking for scnprintf... "yes"
checking for sscanf... "yes"
checking for vmalloc_to_page... "no"
checking for old kmod... "no"
checking for PDE... "no"
checking for pci_set_consistent_dma_mask... "no"
checking for pci_dev_present... "no"
checking for msleep... "yes"
checking for msleep_interrupt... "yes"
checking for tty->count is the atomic type... "no"
checking for video_get_drvdata... "no"
checking for io_remap_pfn_range... "no"
checking for new io_remap_page_range... "no"
checking for kcalloc... "no"
checking for saved_config_space in pci_dev... "no"
checking for driver version... 1.0.9rc4a
checking for sequencer support... yes
checking for OSS/Free emulation... yes
checking for RTC callback support in kernel... "no"
checking for HPET support... "yes"
checking for Procfs support... "yes"
checking for USB support... "yes"
checking for new unlocked/compat_ioctl... "no"
checking for PC-Speaker hook... "no"
checking for kernel PCMCIA
checking for PCMCIA support... "yes"
checking for PC9800 support in kernel... "no"
checking for parallel port support... "yes"
checking for which soundcards to compile driver for... all
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating version
config.status: creating Makefile.conf
config.status: creating snddevices
config.status: creating utils/alsa-driver.spec
config.status: creating utils/buildrpm
config.status: creating toplevel.config
config.status: creating utils/alsasound
config.status: creating utils/alsasound.posix
config.status: creating include/config.h
config.status: include/config.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/config1.h
config.status: include/config1.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/version.h
config.status: include/version.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/autoconf-extra.h
config.status: include/autoconf-extra.h is unchanged
Hacking autoconf.h...
make dep
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/oss'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/oss'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq'
make[4]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/instr'
make[4]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/instr'
make[4]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/oss'
make[4]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/oss'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/ioctl32'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/ioctl32'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c/other'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c/other'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/pcsp'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/pcsp'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl3'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl3'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl4'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl4'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/mpu401'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/mpu401'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/vx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/vx'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/msnd'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/msnd'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1816a'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1816a'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1848'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1848'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/cs423x'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/cs423x'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/es1688'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/es1688'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/gus'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/gus'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/sb'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/sb'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/wavefront'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/wavefront'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth/emux'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth/emux'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pdplus'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pdplus'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pcxhr'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pcxhr'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/echoaudio'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/echoaudio'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ac97'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ac97'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ali5451'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ali5451'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/au88x0'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/au88x0'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ca0106'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ca0106'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/cs46xx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/cs46xx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/emu10k1'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/emu10k1'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/hda'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/hda'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ice1712'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ice1712'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/korg1212'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/korg1212'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/mixart'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/mixart'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/nm256'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/nm256'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/rme9652'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/rme9652'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/trident'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/trident'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ymfpci'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ymfpci'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/vx222'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/vx222'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb/usx2y'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb/usx2y'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/vx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/vx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/pdaudiocf'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/pdaudiocf'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/build SUBDIRS=/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-10-generic'
CC [M] /home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/hpetimer.o
In file included from /home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/include/adriver.h:674,
from /home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/include/sound/driver.h:42,
from /home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/hpetimer.c:22:
include/linux/pci.h:496: error: expected identifier or ‘(’ before numeric constant
/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/hpetimer.c:130: fatal error: opening dependency file /home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/.hpetimer.o.d: Permission denied
compilation terminated.
make[3]: *** [/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/hpetimer.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore] Error 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-10-generic'
make: *** [compile] Error 2
find /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound -name 'snd*.*o' | xargs rm -f
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
mkdir -p /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound/acore
cp snd-hpet.ko snd-hwdep.ko snd-page-alloc.ko snd-pcm.ko snd-rawmidi.ko snd-timer.ko snd.ko /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound/acore
cp: cannot stat `snd-hpet.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-hwdep.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-page-alloc.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-pcm.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-rawmidi.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-timer.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd.ko': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [modules_install] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/opus/alsadriver/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
make: *** [install-modules] Error 1

msimon1960

December 16th, 2006, 03:51 AM

_simon_

December 16th, 2006, 04:02 AM

If this is your first time then of course it will be difficult! It takes a while to get into the swing of things.

What have you done and where are you having problems?

ardvark71

December 16th, 2006, 04:10 AM

Ubuntu is just too difficult.

Just trying to set up a simple, simple, simple file server has taken weeks and it's still not working.

Is there a version of Linux that actually does stuff without a month of reading and several weeks of experimentation? At this point I'm willing to pay for an OS that can share a printer, a couple of files in my small home network.

I guess I went into this believing that one of Linux's strengths was networking -- apparently not!

Matt.](*,)

Hi Matt...

I'm pretty sure someone will be along to help you further with this since I don't know that much about networking in general, however, I do want to encourage you to hang on. I went through the some of the same kind of frustrations you are right now when I switched over to Linux (from XP) full time two months ago. There were a few times I wanted to completely shove my system through the wall. Yet, in that short time, I've been able to fix a bug, compile and install from source and learn some command line code....some of this with the help of the nice folks in this forum!

Believe me, it does get easier with time and practice. ;)

Best Regards...

aysiu

December 16th, 2006, 04:15 AM

StormGuy

December 16th, 2006, 04:21 AM

I apologize to all of you for the vaguery. I am terribly absent minded and often forget to include information, or assume that the reader has intimate knowledge of whatever I'm talking about, without really thinking. ](*,)

At any rate, thanks for being patient with me.

I've sorta managed to isolate what my problem is concerning my wireless card. I have uninstalled an reinstalled the driver (according the the tutorials mentioned) many times, but the part I always get stuck at is section 7 of this walkthrough (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/Broadcom_BCM4311_rev_01_%28ndiswrapper%29#head-6d614c29580a2a14cec5fa52014380e98af72e45)

My output from iwconfig is

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

It looks fine, except for the ESSID section, which ought to contain my ESSID. Also, whenever I run wifi-radar to try to find a wireless access point, it starts spamming this messagein in the terminal:

eth1 Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1: error fetching interface information: Device not found
eth1 No such device

eth1 Interface doesn't support scanning.

With regard to my sound problem, aplay -l returns this:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: HDA Generic [HDA Generic]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Which, according to the Sound Problem Solutions Guide means my problem ought to just be that my sound is muted. I've run the alsamixer command and the sound is both unmuted and at full blast.

ardvark71

December 16th, 2006, 04:33 AM

I've moved this to Other OS Talk.

msimon1960, if you really want to stick with Ubuntu, give your support thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=319690) more than a half hour to be addressed.

Everyone else, if you want to help msimon1960 out, go to this support thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=319690). Otherwise, please take this thread at face value and suggest other distros to try. Thanks.

I don't think a little encouragement ever hurt anyone, he's abviously pretty frustrated and there have been plenty of times I've felt the same way.

As far as other distros, I'm not sure if there are any out there that would spare him the same problems he's having now. Linspire or Mepis might be easier for people just coming over from Windows, according to what I've heard, but I don't know since I've never used them.

Best Regards...

pebo

December 16th, 2006, 04:53 AM

msimon1960
You could try SuSE. Administration under Yast is well integrated and documentation is fairly comprehensive.
As a non-techie linux user it took me ages to get my network set up, but worth the effort.
My advice - stick with it, and keep asking the questions!

aysiu

December 16th, 2006, 02:36 PM

I've moved the post about Ubuntu's documentation to Feedback on the documentation website (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1894675#post1894675)

I'm just trying to keep things clean--there's one thread to help with msimon1960's networking problems, one thread to suggest alternative to Ubuntu, and one thread to address Ubuntu documentation.

msimon1960

December 16th, 2006, 03:36 PM

I don't think a little encouragement ever hurt anyone, he's abviously pretty frustrated and there have been plenty of times I've felt the same way.

As far as other distros, I'm not sure if there are any out there that would spare him the same problems he's having now. Linspire or Mepis might be easier for people just coming over from Windows, according to what I've heard, but I don't know since I've never used them.

Best Regards...

Thanks! At 3 o'clock in the morning after 60-70 hours of work I still couldn't write a file on the server. My patience was wearing a tad thin.

I was/am astounded by how underdeveloped the networking components are. I came into this thinking that between the Unix and Linux communities that basic networking had been polished and a GUI would have been created for network management.

It's a continuing source of frustration and astonishment how much time is poured into arcane projects while fundamental operating system functions like file sharing, printer sharing, etc. receive virtually no attention. Cripes -- for a tiny fraction of the effort that goes into making a Linux MP3 player a functioning NFS GUI could be created.

I'm still not certain about NFS -- I don't know whether it is what is should be -- a network filing system supporting robust file and record locking capabilities. The documentation I've seen so far seems a little sketchy on NFS capabilities.

BTW -- I finally solved the write access problem that was the last straw. Turns out the official documentation and all the threads I've seen on the topic were incomplete. I posted my findings in another thread. I intend to take the 'official' documentation and add the missing pieces (quite a few items actually) as my little contribution to the project and as thanks for the support I have received from the Community.

Ultimately I want to set up LAMP on the same server to host a couple of websites I support and maybe even enable it as a web server as well. This would be the end goal but the difficulty I've experienced in setting up simple file sharing is giving me pause.

Matt. ](*,)

ardvark71

December 16th, 2006, 06:49 PM

Hi...

I'm glad you've got it working and I would have to agree with you concerning the disproportionate amount of time spent on certain aspects of the OS....which probably helps to explain why after all these years, there is STILL no out of the box support for a wide range of winmodems. ](*,)

Best Regards...

pelle.k

December 16th, 2006, 09:17 PM

hey man. untar alsa to /usr/src instead by standing in /usr/src and "untar xvf /home/opus/Desktop/alsa-XXXX.tar.gz".
Install kernel-headers-generic if you haven't done so already.
Try 'sudo make' if plain 'make' doesn't work.
You will probably have a few other errors, but i'll check this thread for replys, so that i can tell you what more is necessary to compile.

I have zero experience with wifi-radar, but eth1 clearly isn't you wireless interface. Is there no preferences menu you could open up?

Post output of iwconfig before.
You essid isn't set. Can you set the essid manually? "iwconfig wlan0 essid WHATEVER"
Post output of iwconfig after.

Could you post the result of "iwlist wlan0 scan"?

StormGuy

December 17th, 2006, 04:46 AM

It seems I suddenly have a new problem. Gnome won't load :( I get a pale tan screen and grey square in the top left corner. I can boot into enlightenment, however, so I'll try running your commands there.

iwconfig before I try to change the ESSID:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Output after I try to change the ESSID with "iwconfig wlan0 essid default"

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

"iwlist wlan0 scan" gives me this:

bash: opus@Serenity:~$: command not found
opus@Serenity:~$ wlan0 No scan results

As for the sound, when I untar the files in /usr/src and then run "sudo ./configure ; make; make install" I get this:

checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
checking whether gcc needs -traditional... no
checking for current directory... /usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a
checking cross compile...
checking for directory with kernel source... /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/build
checking for directory with kernel build...
checking for kernel version... 2.6.17-10-generic
checking for GCC version... Kernel compiler: gcc 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5) Used compiler: gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5)
checking for built-in ALSA... "no"
checking for existing ALSA module... "yes"
checking for Red Hat kernel... "auto"
checking for Red Hat kernel... "no"
checking for SUSE kernel... "auto"
checking for SUSE kernel... "no"
checking to modify of kernel linux/kmod.h... "no"
checking for kernel linux/compiler.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/pm.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/spinlock.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/irq.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/threads.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/rwsem.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/gameport.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/devfs_fs_kernel.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/highmem.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/workqueue.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/dma-mapping.h... "yes"
checking for kernel asm/hw_irq.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/device.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/jiffies.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/compat.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/adb.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/cuda.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/pmu.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/moduleparam.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/syscalls.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/firmware.h... "yes"
checking for kernel module symbol versions... "yes"
checking for PCI support in kernel... "yes"
checking for I2C driver in kernel... module
checking for firmware loader... yes
checking for input subsystem in kernel... yes
checking for directory to store kernel modules... /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound
checking for verbose printk... on
checking for debug level... none
checking for ISA support in kernel... "no"
checking for processor type... x86_64
checking for 32bit compat support... "yes"
checking for SMP... "yes"
checking for Video device support in kernel... "yes"
checking for ISA PnP driver in kernel... yes
checking for PnP driver in kernel... yes
checking for Kernel ISA-PnP support... "no"
checking for Kernel ISA-PnP module support... "no"
checking for strlcpy... "yes"
checking for snprintf... "yes"
checking for vsnprintf... "yes"
checking for scnprintf... "yes"
checking for sscanf... "yes"
checking for vmalloc_to_page... "no"
checking for old kmod... "no"
checking for PDE... "no"
checking for pci_set_consistent_dma_mask... "no"
checking for pci_dev_present... "no"
checking for msleep... "yes"
checking for msleep_interrupt... "yes"
checking for tty->count is the atomic type... "no"
checking for video_get_drvdata... "no"
checking for io_remap_pfn_range... "no"
checking for new io_remap_page_range... "no"
checking for kcalloc... "no"
checking for saved_config_space in pci_dev... "no"
checking for driver version... 1.0.9rc4a
checking for sequencer support... yes
checking for OSS/Free emulation... yes
checking for RTC callback support in kernel... "no"
checking for HPET support... "yes"
checking for Procfs support... "yes"
checking for USB support... "yes"
checking for new unlocked/compat_ioctl... "no"
checking for PC-Speaker hook... "no"
checking for kernel PCMCIA
checking for PCMCIA support... "yes"
checking for PC9800 support in kernel... "no"
checking for parallel port support... "yes"
checking for which soundcards to compile driver for... all
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating version
config.status: creating Makefile.conf
config.status: creating snddevices
config.status: creating utils/alsa-driver.spec
config.status: creating utils/buildrpm
config.status: creating toplevel.config
config.status: creating utils/alsasound
config.status: creating utils/alsasound.posix
config.status: creating include/config.h
config.status: include/config.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/config1.h
config.status: include/config1.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/version.h
config.status: include/version.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/autoconf-extra.h
config.status: include/autoconf-extra.h is unchanged
Hacking autoconf.h...
if [ ! -d include/sound -a ! -L include/sound ]; then \
ln -sf ../alsa-kernel/include include/sound ; \
fi
ln: creating symbolic link `include/sound' to `../alsa-kernel/include': Permission denied
make: *** [include/sound/version.h] Error 1
find /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound -name 'snd*.*o' | xargs rm -f
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
mkdir -p /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound/acore
cp snd-hpet.ko snd-hwdep.ko snd-page-alloc.ko snd-pcm.ko snd-rawmidi.ko snd-timer.ko snd.ko /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound/acore
cp: cannot stat `snd-hpet.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-hwdep.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-page-alloc.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-pcm.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-rawmidi.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-timer.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd.ko': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [modules_install] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
make: *** [install-modules] Error 1

For whatever it's worth, my terminal now beeps when I try to move the arrow keys, and my aplay - l no longer lists my soundcard. Also, I can't mess around with the volume using my function keys on my laptop, nor can I load XMMS and watch the bars on the player silently dance to the beat of a song that is playing, as an error appears each time I try to play a song saying that it can't detect my soundcard.
That combined, with my Gnome no longer loading...and I wonder if I royally screwed something up, though I don't believe I've done anything aside from the same things I've been doing all along and a few things mentioned in this thread. ](*,)

StormGuy

December 17th, 2006, 05:36 AM

I managed to get into Gnome using Failsafe Gnome. The grey box was apparently a text box telling me that certain themes and features were unable to load.

The error said "There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon. Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly. The last error message was: Unable to determine the address of the message bus (try 'man dbus-launch' and 'man dbus-daemon' for help) Gnome will still try to restart the Setting Daemon next time you log in."

What's weird is most of my settings, themes, and background images seemed to load anyway.

Edit: It might also be worth mentioning that my wireless card used to work fine. I'm not sure what happened between it working and not working...as it was literally working minutes before it stopped working.

Edit 2: Gnome is working fine again.

Edit 3: I found the .conf file for wifi-radar and managed to edit it so that it's looking through my wlan0 instead of eth1 (is that the correct way to say that?), so I no longer get that annoying error message in my terminal. Now, I just need to configure my wlan0 so that it's working properly, I think. Is there a way to configure it so that it just scans for ports and doesn't necessarily look for a specific ESSID, or does that not matter?

Edit 4: One interesting thing I'm noticing is that when I use ifconfig, the section entitled Link encap for my wlan0 says "Ethernet". That probably shouldn't be ethernet, right?

3rdalbum

December 17th, 2006, 06:38 AM

Sorry that this information has come too late, but most Linux users these days run Samba, even if all their machines are Linux/Unix.

I had a Samba file server going within a very short space of time - might I suggest you try it?

maxamillion

December 17th, 2006, 06:43 AM

here's my advice:

Download Debian stable (currently sarge) net install iso
Install base system without any extras
go to http://www.ebox-platform.com/ and install via their repositories
use e-box web interface ... uber simple

just a thought, its still debian so you aren't leaving the world of ubuntu because ubuntu is in fact debian modified for the desktop.

/me

pelle.k

December 17th, 2006, 12:00 PM

Hiya. Your installation seems pretty messed up :/
Either way, "iwconfig wlan0 essid default" should be run with sudo. I guess you figured that out by yourself? If you did just that, and your essid didn't change, could you post output of 'dmesg | grep wlan0'
Also you don't have to run "sudo ./configure ; make; make install" like that. The ";" is just to separate the command, so .configure is run with sudo, not "make" and "make install". Do you understand me now? Run them one by one, with sudo.

pissedoffdude

December 17th, 2006, 03:19 PM

the only distro that has detected my broadcom wireless card was freespire but i didnt like it too much

StormGuy

December 17th, 2006, 06:46 PM

Yeah, I realized I needed to use sudo with the "iwconfig wlan0 essid default". Never the less, it didn't change my essid for some reason.

The output of dmesg | grep wlan0 is:

[ 36.026746] wlan0: vendor: ''
[ 36.026751] wlan0: ethernet device 00:14:a5:f3:b8:5d using NDIS driver bcmwl5, 14E4:4311.5.conf
[ 36.026818] wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK; AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK

sudo ./configure:

checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
checking whether gcc needs -traditional... no
checking for current directory... /usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a
checking cross compile...
checking for directory with kernel source... /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/build
checking for directory with kernel build...
checking for kernel version... 2.6.17-10-generic
checking for GCC version... Kernel compiler: gcc 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5) Used compiler: gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5)
checking for built-in ALSA... "no"
checking for existing ALSA module... "yes"
checking for Red Hat kernel... "auto"
checking for Red Hat kernel... "no"
checking for SUSE kernel... "auto"
checking for SUSE kernel... "no"
checking to modify of kernel linux/kmod.h... "no"
checking for kernel linux/compiler.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/pm.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/spinlock.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/irq.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/threads.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/rwsem.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/gameport.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/devfs_fs_kernel.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/highmem.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/workqueue.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/dma-mapping.h... "yes"
checking for kernel asm/hw_irq.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/device.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/jiffies.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/compat.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/adb.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/cuda.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/pmu.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/moduleparam.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/syscalls.h... "yes"
checking for kernel linux/firmware.h... "yes"
checking for kernel module symbol versions... "yes"
checking for PCI support in kernel... "yes"
checking for I2C driver in kernel... module
checking for firmware loader... yes
checking for input subsystem in kernel... yes
checking for directory to store kernel modules... /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound
checking for verbose printk... on
checking for debug level... none
checking for ISA support in kernel... "no"
checking for processor type... x86_64
checking for 32bit compat support... "yes"
checking for SMP... "yes"
checking for Video device support in kernel... "yes"
checking for ISA PnP driver in kernel... yes
checking for PnP driver in kernel... yes
checking for Kernel ISA-PnP support... "no"
checking for Kernel ISA-PnP module support... "no"
checking for strlcpy... "yes"
checking for snprintf... "yes"
checking for vsnprintf... "yes"
checking for scnprintf... "yes"
checking for sscanf... "yes"
checking for vmalloc_to_page... "no"
checking for old kmod... "no"
checking for PDE... "no"
checking for pci_set_consistent_dma_mask... "no"
checking for pci_dev_present... "no"
checking for msleep... "yes"
checking for msleep_interrupt... "yes"
checking for tty->count is the atomic type... "no"
checking for video_get_drvdata... "no"
checking for io_remap_pfn_range... "no"
checking for new io_remap_page_range... "no"
checking for kcalloc... "no"
checking for saved_config_space in pci_dev... "no"
checking for driver version... 1.0.9rc4a
checking for sequencer support... yes
checking for OSS/Free emulation... yes
checking for RTC callback support in kernel... "no"
checking for HPET support... "yes"
checking for Procfs support... "yes"
checking for USB support... "yes"
checking for new unlocked/compat_ioctl... "no"
checking for PC-Speaker hook... "no"
checking for kernel PCMCIA
checking for PCMCIA support... "yes"
checking for PC9800 support in kernel... "no"
checking for parallel port support... "yes"
checking for which soundcards to compile driver for... all
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating version
config.status: creating Makefile.conf
config.status: creating snddevices
config.status: creating utils/alsa-driver.spec
config.status: creating utils/buildrpm
config.status: creating toplevel.config
config.status: creating utils/alsasound
config.status: creating utils/alsasound.posix
config.status: creating include/config.h
config.status: include/config.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/config1.h
config.status: include/config1.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/version.h
config.status: include/version.h is unchanged
config.status: creating include/autoconf-extra.h
config.status: include/autoconf-extra.h is unchanged
Hacking autoconf.h...

sudo make

if [ ! -d include/sound -a ! -L include/sound ]; then \
ln -sf ../alsa-kernel/include include/sound ; \
fi
cp -auvf include/version.h include/sound/version.h
`include/version.h' -> `include/sound/version.h'
make dep
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
copying file alsa-kernel/core/info.c
patching file info.c
Hunk #3 succeeded at 121 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 133 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 143 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #6 succeeded at 174 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #7 succeeded at 506 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #8 succeeded at 519 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #9 succeeded at 933 (offset -2 lines).
Hunk #10 succeeded at 980 (offset -2 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/core/pcm_native.c
patching file pcm_native.c
copying file alsa-kernel/core/control.c
patching file control.c
Hunk #2 succeeded at 1259 (offset 3 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/core/hwdep.c
patching file hwdep.c
copying file alsa-kernel/core/init.c
patching file init.c
copying file alsa-kernel/core/rawmidi.c
patching file rawmidi.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 1274 (offset 7 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 1357 (offset 7 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/core/sound.c
patching file sound.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 64 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 164 with fuzz 2 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 365 (offset -5 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 380 (offset -7 lines).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 500 (offset -3 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/core/timer.c
patching file timer.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 993 (offset -2 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 1842 (offset 51 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 1896 (offset 51 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/core/memalloc.c
patching file memalloc.c
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/oss'
copying file alsa-kernel/core/oss/mixer_oss.c
patching file mixer_oss.c
copying file alsa-kernel/core/oss/pcm_oss.c
patching file pcm_oss.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 2076 (offset 4 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 2242 (offset 4 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 2420 (offset 4 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 2552 (offset 4 lines).
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/oss'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq'
copying file alsa-kernel/core/seq/seq.c
patching file seq.c
copying file alsa-kernel/core/seq/seq_clientmgr.c
patching file seq_clientmgr.c
copying file alsa-kernel/core/seq/seq_memory.c
patching file seq_memory.c
make[4]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/instr'
make[4]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/instr'
make[4]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/oss'
copying file alsa-kernel/core/seq/oss/seq_oss.c
patching file seq_oss.c
make[4]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq/oss'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/seq'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/ioctl32'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/ioctl32'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c/other'
copying file alsa-kernel/i2c/other/tea575x-tuner.c
patching file tea575x-tuner.c
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c/other'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/i2c'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/pcsp'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/pcsp'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl3'
copying file alsa-kernel/drivers/opl3/opl3_lib.c
patching file opl3_lib.c
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl3'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl4'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/opl4'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/mpu401'
copying file alsa-kernel/drivers/mpu401/mpu401.c
patching file mpu401.c
Hunk #3 succeeded at 62 with fuzz 1.
Hunk #4 succeeded at 89 with fuzz 2 (offset -58 lines).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 241 (offset -6 lines).
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/mpu401'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/vx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers/vx'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/drivers'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/msnd'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/msnd'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1816a'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1816a'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1848'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/ad1848'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/cs423x'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/cs423x'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/es1688'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/es1688'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/gus'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/gus'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/opti9xx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/sb'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/sb'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/wavefront'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa/wavefront'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/isa'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth/emux'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth/emux'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/synth'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci'
copying file alsa-kernel/pci/bt87x.c
patching file bt87x.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 803 (offset 28 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 936 (offset 28 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/pci/intel8x0.c
patching file intel8x0.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 41 (offset -2 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 748 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 759 (offset -1 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 2863 (offset 50 lines).
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pdplus'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pdplus'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pcxhr'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/pcxhr'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/echoaudio'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/echoaudio'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ac97'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ac97'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ali5451'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ali5451'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/au88x0'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/au88x0'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ca0106'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ca0106'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/cs46xx'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/cs46xx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/emu10k1'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/emu10k1'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/hda'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/hda'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ice1712'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ice1712'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/korg1212'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/korg1212'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/mixart'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/mixart'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/nm256'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/nm256'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/rme9652'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/rme9652'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/trident'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/trident'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ymfpci'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/ymfpci'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/vx222'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci/vx222'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pci'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb'
copying file alsa-kernel/usb/usbaudio.c
patching file usbaudio.c
Hunk #3 succeeded at 1882 (offset -26 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 1901 (offset -26 lines).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 1918 (offset -26 lines).
Hunk #6 succeeded at 2452 (offset -26 lines).
Hunk #7 succeeded at 2519 (offset -26 lines).
Hunk #8 succeeded at 2810 (offset -27 lines).
Hunk #9 succeeded at 2880 (offset -27 lines).
Hunk #10 succeeded at 2942 (offset -27 lines).
Hunk #11 succeeded at 2960 (offset -27 lines).
Hunk #12 succeeded at 3118 (offset -8 lines).
Hunk #13 succeeded at 3210 (offset -10 lines).
Hunk #14 succeeded at 3342 (offset -4 lines).
Hunk #15 succeeded at 3373 (offset -4 lines).
Hunk #16 succeeded at 3395 (offset -4 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/usb/usbmidi.c
patching file usbmidi.c
copying file alsa-kernel/usb/usbmixer.c
patching file usbmixer.c
Hunk #2 succeeded at 1650 (offset 1 line).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 1699 (offset 1 line).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 1720 (offset 1 line).
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb/usx2y'
copying file alsa-kernel/usb/usx2y/usX2Yhwdep.c
patching file usX2Yhwdep.c
copying file alsa-kernel/usb/usx2y/usbusx2y.c
patching file usbusx2y.c
copying file alsa-kernel/usb/usx2y/usbusx2yaudio.c
patching file usbusx2yaudio.c
copying file alsa-kernel/usb/usx2y/usx2yhwdeppcm.c
patching file usx2yhwdeppcm.c
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb/usx2y'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/usb'
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/vx'
copying file alsa-kernel/pcmcia/vx/vxpocket.c
patching file vxpocket.c
Hunk #2 succeeded at 167 (offset -8 lines).
copying file alsa-kernel/pcmcia/vx/vx_entry.c
patching file vx_entry.c
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/vx'
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/pdaudiocf'
copying file alsa-kernel/pcmcia/pdaudiocf/pdaudiocf.c
patching file pdaudiocf.c
Hunk #3 succeeded at 73 (offset -7 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 180 with fuzz 1 (offset -12 lines).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 266 (offset -13 lines).
Hunk #6 succeeded at 361 (offset -16 lines).
Hunk #7 succeeded at 432 (offset -16 lines).
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia/pdaudiocf'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/pcmcia'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/build SUBDIRS=/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-10-generic'
CC [M] /usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/hpetimer.o
In file included from /usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/include/adriver.h:674,
from /usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/include/sound/driver.h:42,
from /usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/hpetimer.c:22:
include/linux/pci.h:496: error: expected identifier or ‘(’ before numeric constant
make[3]: *** [/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore/hpetimer.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore] Error 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-10-generic'
make: *** [compile] Error 2

and sudo make install:

find /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound -name 'snd*.*o' | xargs rm -f
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
mkdir -p /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound/acore
cp snd-hpet.ko snd-hwdep.ko snd-page-alloc.ko snd-pcm.ko snd-rawmidi.ko snd-timer.ko snd.ko /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/sound/acore
cp: cannot stat `snd-hpet.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-hwdep.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-page-alloc.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-pcm.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-rawmidi.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd-timer.ko': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `snd.ko': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [modules_install] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/alsa-driver-1.0.9rc4a/acore'
make: *** [install-modules] Error 1

Sorry about that. I didn't realize you wanted me to run them seperately.

Thanks for helping me out, though. I really appreciate it.

pelle.k

December 17th, 2006, 08:02 PM

OK. let's dig some more. Post the output of these commands;

ls -a /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/
dmesg | grep ndis*
find /lib -iname ndis*
lspci | grep Broadcom
sudo ndiswrapper -v
sudo ndiswrapper -i
lsmod
cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

StormGuy

December 17th, 2006, 10:05 PM

Looks like Gnome is completely broken now, as Failsafe Gnome doesn't work either. Enlightenment is working alright...

I hate asking questions like this, as they're a little subjective, but do you think maybe a clean reinstallation of Ubuntu might be the way to go?

Anyways, here are the outputs for those commands.

ls -a /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/

14E4:4311:1365:103C.5.conf 14E4:4312:1361:103C.5.conf 14E4:4318:1356:103C.5.conf 14E4:4319:1359:103C.5.conf 14E4:4320:12F4:103C.5.conf 14E4:4320.5.conf bcmwl564.sys
.. 14E4:4311.5.conf 14E4:4312:1362:103C.5.conf 14E4:4318:1357:103C.5.conf 14E4:4319:135A:103C.5.conf 14E4:4320:12F8:103C.5.conf 14E4:4324:12F9:103C.5.conf bcmwl5.inf
14E4:4311:1363:103C.5.conf 14E4:4312:135F:103C.5.conf 14E4:4312.5.conf 14E4:4318.5.conf 14E4:4319.5.conf 14E4:4320:12FA:103C.5.conf 14E4:4324:12FC:103C.5.conf .conf
14E4:4311:1364:103C.5.conf 14E4:4312:1360:103C.5.conf 14E4:4318:1355:103C.5.conf 14E4:4319:1358:103C.5.conf 14E4:4320:00E7:0E11.5.conf 14E4:4320:12FB:103C.5.conf 14E4:4324.5.conf .conf~

dmesg | grep ndis* didn't return anything

find /lib -iname ndis*

find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]

lspci | grep Broadcom

05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 4311 (rev 01)

sudo ndiswrapper -v

utils version: 1.9
driver version: 1.28
vermagic: 2.6.17-10-generic SMP mod_unload gcc-4.1

sudo ndiswrapper -i

install/manage Windows drivers for ndiswrapper

usage: ndiswrapper OPTION
-i inffile install driver described by 'inffile'
-a devid driver use installed 'driver' for 'devid'
-r driver remove 'driver'
-l list installed drivers
-m write configuration for modprobe
-ma write module alias configuration for all devices
-mi write module install configuration for all devices
-v report version information

where 'devid' is either PCIID or USBID of the form XXXX:XXXX,
as reported by 'lspci -n' or 'lsusb' for the card

lsmod

Module Size Used by
binfmt_misc 16012 1
rfcomm 51360 0
l2cap 31744 5 rfcomm
bluetooth 64644 4 rfcomm,l2cap
powernow_k8 16576 1
cpufreq_userspace 6560 0
cpufreq_stats 9312 0
freq_table 7104 2 powernow_k8,cpufreq_stats
cpufreq_powersave 3456 0
cpufreq_ondemand 10928 1
cpufreq_conservative 11272 0
video 22920 0
tc1100_wmi 10632 0
sony_acpi 7704 0
sbs 20928 0
pcc_acpi 19968 0
i2c_ec 7808 1 sbs
i2c_core 29312 1 i2c_ec
hotkey 14536 0
dev_acpi 17540 0
container 6656 0
button 9888 0
battery 14088 0
asus_acpi 21924 0
ac 8328 0
af_packet 29452 4
joydev 14208 0
tsdev 11136 0
ndiswrapper 277288 0
sbp2 29448 0
scsi_mod 181424 1 sbp2
parport_pc 43560 0
lp 16584 0
parport 49932 2 parport_pc,lp
psmouse 51088 0
pcmcia 49048 0
serio_raw 10244 0
tifm_7xx1 11264 0
tifm_core 12928 1 tifm_7xx1
pcspkr 5248 0
evdev 14592 2
yenta_socket 33420 1
rsrc_nonstatic 16896 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 52772 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
sky2 50436 0
soundcore 14112 0
shpchp 49068 0
pci_hotplug 38912 1 shpchp
ext3 164624 1
jbd 74024 1 ext3
ohci1394 40776 0
ieee1394 387704 2 sbp2,ohci1394
ehci_hcd 40456 0
ohci_hcd 25988 0
usbcore 167840 4 ndiswrapper,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd
ide_generic 2944 0
ide_cd 39584 0
cdrom 43816 1 ide_cd
ide_disk 21248 3
generic 7940 0
atiixp 9232 1
thermal 19472 0
processor 38280 2 powernow_k8,thermal
fan 7432 0
vesafb 11048 0
capability 7304 0
commoncap 10752 1 capability
vga16fb 16656 1
cfbcopyarea 5376 2 vesafb,vga16fb
vgastate 10368 1 vga16fb
cfbimgblt 4352 2 vesafb,vga16fb
cfbfillrect 6272 2 vesafb,vga16fb
fbcon 45824 72
tileblit 4736 1 fbcon
font 10240 1 fbcon
bitblit 8064 1 fbcon
softcursor 3968 1 bitblit

cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

# This file lists those modules which we don't want to be loaded by
# alias expansion, usually so some other driver will be loaded for the
# device instead.

# evbug is a debug tool that should be loaded explicitly
blacklist evbug

# these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred
blacklist usbmouse
blacklist usbkbd

# replaced by e100
blacklist eepro100

# replaced by tulip
blacklist de4x5

# causes no end of confusion by creating unexpected network interfaces
blacklist eth1394

# snd_intel8x0m can interfere with snd_intel8x0, doesn't seem to support much
# hardware on its own (Ubuntu bug #2011, #6810)
blacklist snd_intel8x0m

# causes failure to suspend on HP compaq nc6000 (Ubuntu: #10306)
blacklist i2c_i801

#crappy driver
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcm43xx
#module below does not work with Broadcom 4318 wireless cards
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ipv6
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ipv6
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcm43xx

Edit: It's strange...Gnome seems to work fine as long as I don't load it up with an ethernet cable plugged in...I have to add it afterward. However, sometimes the terminal windows and window for the networking application seem to load completely blank and featureless...and then crash. I have to restart Gnome for them to work again.

wilmonkey

December 17th, 2006, 10:44 PM

with regard to your alsa driver compilation problem:
I'm having exactly the same error message right now.

looking at the headers that I located on my system:
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-10-generic/include/linux/pci.h

seems like perfectly fine C code. so I'm stuck!

any ideas?

pelle.k

December 18th, 2006, 12:25 AM

Yes, reinstall it.

Then download ndiswrapper 1.31 source.
I will try to compile alsa myself, so just chill with that.

remove old ndiswrapper. find it by doing;
sudo find /lib -iname ndiswrapper.ko
untar the source to /usr/src (by standing there...) then install
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential
sudo ln -s linux-headers-2.6.17-10 linux
cd to ndiswrapper dir and;
make
sudo make install
depmod -a
cd to your driver dir and;
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -m

load it up for the first time;
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

check log, if something went wrong
sudo tail /var/log/messages

if OK, can we scan?
iwlist wlan0 scan

Success?

StormGuy

December 18th, 2006, 04:03 AM

So far so good. Just gotta get the drivers, but I have ndiswrapper :)

Edit: I seem to be having a hard time finding the drivers. I saved the .sys and .inf files, but apparently that isn't enough. Ndiswrapper is requesting all of the .bin files "(if any)" so I need to redownload the drivers :(

Edit 2: Found the drivers, wrapped em without a problem.

ndiswrapper -l

bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

iwlist wlan0 scan still isn't working

iwlist wlan0 scan

wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

Looks like we're closer, though.

Edit 3: Ok, I followed some steps I found on this guide (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=201902&page=4), namely:

"change eth1 -> wlan0 in :
/etc/modeprobe.d/ndiswrapper
/etc/network/interface
/etc/iftab"

My iwlist wlan 0 scan now gives me

wlan0 No scan results

Which is better, I think. However, I can no longer connect to the net using my ethernet cable. In other words, my laptop can't connect to the net at all at this point, but it is detecting my wireless card. It just looks like the card isn't doing anything.

Edit 4: Nevermind, upon rebooting my system again, it's saying that the wlan0 device doesn't support scanning. Interesting to note that now, my iwconfig returns that the ESSID for wlan0 is no longer "off/any" but is instead "". Also, wifi-radar now spams that "wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : No such device" message for wlan0. Is there just something somewhere that isn't configured properly? I've followed the guides I've found on the forums to a "T". I've compared the config files they mention with my own and they line up 1-to-1. I'm totally lost :(

pelle.k

December 18th, 2006, 12:30 PM

You go ahead and change it back - wlan0 to eth1 in /etc/network/interfaces (i assume you mean interfaces with an "s"?) and /etc/iftab
You can leave the changes in /etc/modeprobe.d/ndiswrapper

I would suggest using another windows driver version. ndiswrapper is __really__ picky about driver versions. Try the one in this thread. (It's a thread were all succeded where you haven't...)
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=193350

groggyboy

December 18th, 2006, 04:18 PM

Well, the title says it. I've been using Ubuntu for a while now, but I haven't really tried other distros (except openSUSE - I've got 10.2 running in dual boot at the moment).

I want to try another distro, but I want something that'll really test/expand my knowledge of the linux nuts and bolts. Oh, and it must have decent hardware detection for a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop with an i915 graphics card and an intel 2200b/g wireless card.

Any recommendations?

josys36

December 18th, 2006, 04:58 PM

Yea OS/2 Warp version 4. Ha Ha Ha :)

You might want to try Gentoo.

Jason

tkjacobsen

December 18th, 2006, 05:03 PM

Gentoo is really good for learning more about linux. How to compile your own kernel, build your own system..

But it's pain in the a.. to use as a everyday distro, cause it takes much time just to get it up and running.. When you get the x-server and sound working, you are so tired, you just go install ubuntu again..

earobinson

December 18th, 2006, 05:10 PM

gentoo is the most hands on distro I can think of, but then you can learn anything in ubuntu that you can leran in gentoo, gentoo just forces you to learn it

hal10000

December 18th, 2006, 06:08 PM

You can use any distribution you like (but ubuntu is the best).
If you choose gentoo, then after two weeks of instaling and configuring you will get a very very fast system, but it's not easy to keep the system because it sometimes updates to packages which are very new (and buggy).

If you like to learn about linux, here are some (hopefully) useful links:
http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/index.html
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://qref.sourceforge.net/

scrooge_74

December 18th, 2006, 06:18 PM

arvster

December 18th, 2006, 06:18 PM

For me Slackware was the distro that helped me to learn more about Linux internals. For quite a long time it was as my primary OS, but eventually I returned to the ease of use side of distros and ended up here (with Ubuntu). I learned a lot though with the time I spent in Slackware. Also I used Gentoo for quite some time- I would also recommend that as a good learning tool.

groggyboy

December 18th, 2006, 06:30 PM

cool! thanks for the advice. so, debian, gentoo or slackware, eh? i'll look make sure to check them out (and i'll check out those links you posted Hal10000). people say ubuntu is just as powerful as those other distros (and i believe them), but having GUI options for everything means I don't need to roll up my sleeves. using a distro where i don't have the option would force me to learn! :twisted:

cheers!

jdhore

December 18th, 2006, 06:39 PM

i'd recommend Debian, Gentoo or FreeBSD...

StormGuy

December 18th, 2006, 09:43 PM

I'm not sure what I did when I edited those files, but I went back to change the wlan0 entries back to eth1, and it is now reading my eth1 as a wireless device.

RAV TUX

December 18th, 2006, 11:17 PM

I suggest Sabayon which is a pre-compiled Gentoo distro...

Why Sabayon and not Gentoo?

because while it is fun to learn it is also fun for everything to just work, then you can learn everything about Gentoo on your own time;)

StormGuy

December 19th, 2006, 01:44 AM

I reformatted again and installed those drivers that were in that thread you gave me a link to. However, I still can't scan :(

Edit: After messing with some stuff, this is my output for iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:off/any Nickname:"Broadcom 4311"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.484 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=18 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

and this is the output for iwlist eth1 scan

eth1 No scan results

So...it's as though it recognizes it...but the card isn't scanning. I also just left it as eth1. Does it have to be wlan0 to work correctly?

Edit 2: After messing around a bit more, it seems that I no longer have an eth1 or a wlan0

ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:E0:B8:B9:6F:50
inet addr:192.168.0.107 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::2e0:b8ff:feb9:6f50/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1074 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:987 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:842603 (822.8 KiB) TX bytes:135436 (132.2 KiB)
Interrupt:217

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:200 (200.0 b) TX bytes:200 (200.0 b)

iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

tkjacobsen

December 19th, 2006, 04:12 AM

You can try using Debian stable which is the base of Ubuntu. Should detect your hardware, but since it is a little less user friendly you will need to edit a lot of config files by hand.

I was using Debian for a coupĺe of months before trying Ubuntu. I did learn a few things before using Ubuntu. I still feel at home using the command line to do things.

I also use Puppy linux or DSL from time to time just to do something different.

Debian is a really good idea, if you wish to continue using ubuntu afterwards. But you shouldn't use the stable branch. Try either the testing (soon to become stable - but you could upgrade to the next testing branch afterwards - stable is just too boring) or the unstable branch (which Ubuntu is build upon) - upgrades will often introduce a breakage.

Freebsd is also a lot of fun and a great lerning experience, but it is a lot different from linux, so if you want to lern linux this is not the way to go.

Almighty

December 19th, 2006, 04:50 AM

If you really want to learn GNU/Linux, look no further than LFS.

scrooge_74

December 19th, 2006, 08:06 AM

Debian is a really good idea, if you wish to continue using ubuntu afterwards. But you shouldn't use the stable branch. Try either the testing (soon to become stable - but you could upgrade to the next testing branch afterwards - stable is just too boring) or the unstable branch (which Ubuntu is build upon) - upgrades will often introduce a breakage.

Freebsd is also a lot of fun and a great lerning experience, but it is a lot different from linux, so if you want to lern linux this is not the way to go.

Debian stable maybe "to boring", but if you are new to Linux is better to have things work from the start so you can them make changes to instead have a system not working and then you don't have a clue what to do.

derjames

December 19th, 2006, 08:14 AM

I would go for gentoo... The gentoo documentation is simply great...

Circus-Killer

December 19th, 2006, 08:19 AM

gentoo is the most hands on distro I can think of, but then you can learn anything in ubuntu that you can leran in gentoo, gentoo just forces you to learn it

i completely agee with this. there is nothing you can't learn in ubuntu, it's just a matter of how much you need to be pushed to learn.

clearly, you are like me. you need that extra push in the right direction. this is where gentoo is great. gentoo will allow you to build your own system from the ground up, teaching you many things as you go along. however, as mentioned, nothing that can be learnt in gentoo, cant be learnt in ubuntu.

basically, when you install gentoo, you are building a system from scratch. when you install a distro like ubuntu, you are installing a pre-built system. it is true that gentoo allows for greater customization, but these customizations are fairly minimal, and not worth the effort of a desktop user. the only real advantage for gentoo (imo) is for those who do want to learn more about linux, more than what ubuntu forces them to learn.

so to some it up, i highly recommend gentoo, but i wouldnt be surprised if you came back once you've had enough. i honestly love gentoo, but it does take up too much time, and thats when i decided enough with gentoo, and started using ubuntu full time.

i do miss some things regarding it. but for desktops, binary distros are all you really need, no matter how much you want to learn.

StormGuy

December 19th, 2006, 10:11 AM

Well, I managed to configure my wireless finally by giving in and using a totally different card...a D-Link DWL650+. While that's a bitter-sweet victory, and it means I have to buy a new card (since I stole my mom's temporarily <.<), all that remains is the sound...which is a far less severe issue than the wireless was.

At any rate, thank all you so much for your help...especially pelle.k who stayed with me for so long :)

pelle.k

December 19th, 2006, 03:22 PM

Hi there. I'm really sorry, but it didn't succeed in compiling alsa-driver 1.13. I really did try, but failed and failed again. I got further than you did anyway. I can't really give you another option than, well maybe trying out another distro. :(
Trying another distro can do wonders to your understanding of linux and computers in general, so it isn't all bad...
I suggest you check out distrowatch.com and the "Other OS" section here at ubuntuforums.

StormGuy

December 19th, 2006, 06:16 PM

pissedoffdude

December 19th, 2006, 06:42 PM

Thanks. The distro that looks the most compatible is Freespire, but there isn't a version for 64-bit architecture, that I found, yet :/ . I guess it's enough that I have my wireless working for now.

I'll look at some of the other distros, though. Thanks again.

After trying many 64 bit distros my favorite 64 bit distro so far is fedora core 6. It doesnt have a live cd though so I really cant tell you if your wireless card will work. But freespire should be able to detect ur wireless card.

StormGuy

December 19th, 2006, 07:22 PM

I've also been considering openSUSE. It looks like it might also be pretty friendly towards my lappy.

pelle.k

December 20th, 2006, 12:10 AM

I heard fedoras 64bit edition is really good. Personally, i would wait a few more months with 64bit anything. So you might as well run openSUSE 32bit in my book.

RAV TUX

December 20th, 2006, 12:42 AM

64 bit rpath

and

64 bit Sabayon Linux

both work like a dream now....