Hi All,
Problem:
I wanted to try Steam for Linux on my Gaming PC, tried installing Ubuntu 12.10 (and Mint 14) and the install is amazingly slow, at the 'Copying Files...' stage for example this takes about an hour. I killed the install (after going to the pub and back) and rebooted and was amazed to find myself on the Desktop. However running apt-get took an age and always failed and I think DPKG is what was being slow. I discovered that apt-get and dpkg were completely broken and could not be fixed (likely because I cancelled the install).
Ubuntu itself ran fine incidentally; very smooth and speedy with the exceptions I've listed.
By contrast Debian 6 (which I've used for years on my Server) installs in about 25 minutes and runs fine, all be it too old to get Steam running (without hassle anyway). Someone suggested to me that this may be because it is older and is using less modern drivers (or something) and Ubuntu is trying to do it the 'correct' or 'modern' way and is somehow failing, causing the huge speed problem.
What I've tried:
I only had Ubuntu "Installed" for an evening, since the install didn’t really finish I can't blame Ubuntu for not working at this point. So I ran through a selection of fixes for apt-get and so on but nothing worked, /var/lib/dpkg/status (and status-old) were both 0k and similar forum posts I found all suggested this was a critical problem and a complete re-install was the suggested fix.
I tried upgrading the Kernel to one which supports TRIM and enable the features for this from varying sources, I tried many combinations, no change in performance.
Links on TRIM (though I can’t see this as being the culprit): link, link
What I'm doing now:
Reading through the Kernel help files so that (when I'm ready to) I can build my own Kernel for what I need. This is quite long (and much of it makes little sense to me) so any links to useful resources there would be appreciated, such as do I really need to read all of it since most of it just says 'if unsure leave as 'no''? My money is on this being some sort of driver / kernel / hardware incompatibility which *should* have a workaround / fix somewhere.
Specs:
Intel i7 3770k 3.5Ghz (Ivybridge)
Asus P8Z77 Pro (related info)
32GB of DDR3 RAM (Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz in 4*8GB modules)
Crucial M4 128GB SSD (OS Drive, Windows 7 runs great, has latest firmware 040H)
3*Intel X25-M SSDs (Windows is using them as my Stuff partition so can be ignored for this)
On the Crucial M4, this link shows someone using this drive under Ubuntu 11.04 without issue (and on the older version of my motherboard, well fairly similar).
Any Ideas:
So what I need to know is what's is actually going wrong, why is the Ubuntu installer so slow, what is wrong with apt-get/DPKG, are there easy fixes for any of these things, am I likely to need to build my own custom Ubuntu installer to get this to work on my machine? A few 'Linux Guys' at work have blamed my SSD, but if that's the case and it can't be fixed right now I'll give up as I don't want to buy a normal HDD just so I don't have to use Windows anymore.
Also BTW, I am one of those people who think Linux is held back by the lack of game support! There don't seem to be many of us around anymore.
ALSO NOTE: Debian is currently installed as I needed to get back to Windows and it seemed the quickest way to fix the boot loader while still playing with Linux. I may run the installer all day while I'm at work and *hope* it works well enough when I get home to do something.
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