Linux questions from a Windows/OS X user

[LSchafroth]

So.....I tried to take the Linux plunge this week and it has not been a very pleasant experience.

I found a site that asked me a lot of questions and it determined the best Linux distributions that would be a good fit for me.

It listed in the order from best to worst:

openSUSE 10.3
Ubuntu
Kubuntu 7.10
Mandriva 2008-1

I installed openSUSE first. The installation menu was a clugy piece of you know what. I had a blank dedicated hard drive for the Linux and it wanted to change my windows drive instead and totally ignored the dedicated drive. I manually partitioned it and during the installation over 50% of all RPM's failed with integrity checks. The instalation failed after 1.8 hours of hitting SKIP or IGNORE on all these errors. I tried a different ISO download, a different brand of CD and even installed into Vmware from the ISO itself. Same errors. This distribution is apparnetly not ready for production yet.

I then did Kubuntu since KDE sounded like the best GUI for me. The installation was a snap, very fast, very easy. Done in less than 20 minutes. All applications worked and all drivers installed for all devices. So I got brave and did the updates. It comlained about something having a process locked even though nothing else was running. After the reboot, FILE MISSING.....

So I tried a fresh install of it again. Booted great. Updates ran, complained about it being locked and unabled to access the files to update. upon reboot it asked for my username and password and would only boot into a CLI mode. The GUI is now gone.

I then tried Mandriva. Install was very easy, somewhat fast. Booted right to my desktop. All programs are missing the close, maximize and minimize buttons. Very annoying. You cannot grab a window and move it around. Everything worked until I went into the control panel and tried to make changes to my video display. FROZE. Hardware reset. Rebooted. using it for a while to browse the web. Pain without resize buttons or minimize buttons but I used it anyway. I must be missing a setting somewhere to turn all those buttons and controls on. I could not do a search in HELP for themes becasue all help was missing.

The updates worked just fine, but without the ability to change the themes and the constant lockups and the lack of resize and minimize buttons, it is useless.

I also noticed all Linux distributions took over 45 seconds to boot. Windows boots to the desktop in 18 seconds. OS X (OSx86) boots to desktop in 31 seconds. I was awlays told Linux was very fast and solid. So far I have experienced NONE of the above.

Are there any other distributions that are stable enough for me to try so I can learn Unix?

My system specs:

ASRock NF8Upgrade Nforce 3 chipset
Athlon 64 3500+
Dual SATA 160Gb hard drives
2Gb DDR400
GeForce 6600 AGP 8x 256Mb RAM
19" NEC LCD Display

This system is 100% rock solid and I've built systems for years. So far the only thing that fails to run on this box is Linux. I can run XP for months without a reboot.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

LS

[disturbed1]

First boot times. Something's up there. On my systems, Ubuntu boots in 26-30 seconds before turning off all the extra modules and editing the init profiles. I can get it down to 20 seconds. Arch boots in 16-17 seconds. Ubuntu Hardy boots in 21 seconds first go. In comparison, my girlfriend has an identical AMD system as mine. With a fresh install of XP, it's quick, real quick, about the same Arch, but I think it has Arch beat. After a couple of weeks of usage, and all the drivers installed, it take 50seconds from the WinXP logo to a usable desktop, about 25 seconds from logo start to desktop display.

openSUSE - it's a pig. The installer sucks. Configuring yast, reconfiguring yast. Rpms fail to install. It was never a pretty experience for me. Once I held my breath and managed to make it past the installer, the system just wasn't all that. Throughly unimpressed. Some people just love Suse will most likely find me and torture me now, but that's my opinion

Kubuntu - gets only 60-70% effort of the whole Ubuntu team. Kubuntu is like a red headed step child. It's loved, but gets mostly hand me downs.

Your experience with the updates in Kubuntu and Ubuntu are not normal. Sounds more like you tried the alpha (not even beta) edition of Hardy (8.04) as that is a common error message. When you first install Ubuntu, you'll get a notification of updates. Install these first, then reboot. You have to reboot because there is a new kernel installed. After reboot, install your graphics driver for nvidia. DO NOT DO THIS BEFORE INSTALLING THE NEW KERNEL It just won't work. If you install the nvidia driver before the new kernel, or before rebooting with the new kernel, it will fail.

If you're hell bent on a KDE setup, there are a couple of other options you might want to look into. Sidux, Linux Mint, Mepis, and PCLinux. I believe they all offer live cds so you don't have to install unless you want to. You also might want to check out VMWare or Virtual Box. So you can Virtualize the OS inside Windows, without touching your Hard Drives. Personal note - I hate KDE and everything Trolltech, with an extreme passion. Before I left Ubuntu after 4 years of use, I distro hopped for a month. Sidux almost made me like KDE ----- almost

[LSchafroth]

Out of all of them I like Kubuntu the best. I just went with KDE as it was the one all the reviews recommended over Gnome.

I am willing to try anything to get to know Linux. I used Kubuntu Hardy version I think. Whichever is the 7.10. Or was it gutsy??

Should I use Ubuntu instead then?


So when I choose to do the updates, do the kernel update first then mess with the graphics after that? I am very familiar with OS X, so are the drivers and etc similar to that? (Debian)

I got pretty good at editing the KEXT files for GeForce cards.

Thanks!

LS

[LSchafroth]

I've never heard of ARCHlinux before.

I'm looking to use this in a business / education environment with the potential to put some in a lab in our school.

So I would be doing the basics with OpenOffice, web work and etc.

LS

[GMaq]

Hello,
Good advice from disturbed1. If you are kicking the tires avoid Beta and/or RC versions like the plague.

Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy is the current stable platform, I highly recommend it for your first go, Once you know your way around then you can compare KDE and Gnome with other Distros, Linux Mint 4.0 is also an excellent choice as stated before.

MEPIS 7.0 could be a good starting point if you must have KDE. Personally I think KDE and Windows UI's don't have much more in common than Apples and Oranges. If you are going to try a new OS it's not like Gnome is hard to figure out, quite the opposite it's very intuitive.

[disturbed1]

KDE vs Gnome vs Fluxbox vs Xfce vs Obenbox vs E. What ever you want. Go ahead and install them all You don't have to chose only one. You can use and install which ever Window Manager or Desktop Environment you want. Right now, you're in the playing stage, just getting a feel for things. You'll have to try quite a bit out until you find what you like. If you like 2 of them, keep them both. That's the beauty, and sometimes the downfall to Linux, the choice is always yours.

I personally love Gnome, but tell most people to try KDE first, then Gnome. Some stick with KDE, others go with Gnome, it's your choice.

About Linux distros, you basically have 3 catagories.

Old and Stable - Like Debian Etch, Fedora 7, CentOS.

Sort of Stable and sort of new - Ubuntu (7.10 Gusty), Debian Testing, Fedora 8, Mandriva, Suse

On the edge - Arch, Debian Sid, Gentoo, anything alpha. Fedora 9, Mandriva Cooker.

Each distro usually has a stable release and a testing/beta/alpha release. Anything that says beta/testing/alpha, expect more bugs than usual. Stuff will break, no way around it. Depends on your ability to fix things and put up with bugs that determines your experience with these.

If you want to learn Linux, read the arch wiki (www.archlinux.org) and give it a shot. Don't expect any hand holding, or answers to questions like help Hal isn't automounting my USB devices, why can't I watch You tube videos, questions about tuning the kernel scheduler, fixing g_assert compile time errors from glib2 will get some pointers though. If you don't know how to use nano, or understand what order hal, cups, alsa, or cron should be loaded in, you'll be in for a ride. Or Slackware (www.slackware.com), Slackware doesn't have an official forum, there is a third party one at www.linuxquestions.org though, gives you a complete install from the disc, but you still have to configure sound, and Xorg by hand. Arch installs tools to compile packages, download packages, and edit config files. Gentoo and LFS are each more in depth learning experiences, with LFS being the mother of them all.

You really want to update the kernel first, then reboot. This will ensure that any software that hooks into, or relies directly on the kernel will get installed correctly. When you first boot Ubuntu 7.10 you have kernel 2.22.x, so anything that hooks into the kernel will expect 2.22.x. If you then install the kernel afterwards anything that was looking for 2.22.x will fail because it isn't there.

Debian and OSX have (mostly) absolutely nothing in common. Perhaps you meant Darwin? Which is a spin off of FreeBSD.


Personally, I'd highly recomend Ubuntu to start with. The community is large, and most questions you'd ever possibly have, were already asked and answered 50 times a day. Things like why won't this movie file play? How come this works in Windows but not Linux, I have no sound, helppppp!!!!!. To how do I edit my init scripts for faster loading. What's the best CFLAGS to pass, how can I change my ............ It is all covered in their Wiki and forums. Ubuntu defaults with the Gnome desktop, you can install KDE, or Xfce, or what you want. It will not harm your system. The only down side is that some KDE apps will show up in your Gnome menu, and some Gnome apps will show up in your KDE menu, which can be easily edited.

[Webster]

I'm looking to use this in a business / education environment with the potential to put some in a lab in our school.

So I would be doing the basics with OpenOffice, web work and etc.

LS

If you going to do it is a business/education environment, another distro you try is Centos. That way, you don't have to worry about people play MP3, video, games on the machine (unless you set them up)

[disturbed1]

I've never heard of ARCHlinux before.

I'm looking to use this in a business / education environment with the potential to put some in a lab in our school.

So I would be doing the basics with OpenOffice, web work and etc.

LS

I second the post above me. CentOs would be a great choice for this. As would Debian Etch. CentOs is the exact same thing as RedHat Enterprise Linux, without all of the RedHat branding. They have their own forum, plus you can use RedHat's resources for help. Ubuntu is great as a desktop, and great as a CLI server, and can be set up (with work) as a work station. Seeing as this won't be used as a personal desktop, the priority should be placed on stabilty. In all honesty, nothing is more stable than Debian Stable. With more than 18,000 packages to chose from, I'm sure they have you covered. Ubuntu is a spin off of Debian. Think of it as Debian with bling

Give those 3 a shot, throughly test out CentOs, Debian Stable, and Ubuntu. One of those 3 should fit your purpose perfectly.

You could use Arch or Slackware, or Gentoo, or anything else in the same situation. It would require a bit of though work. I guess the difference between Ubuntu and Arch (or any minimalist Linux) is - With Ubuntu you'll spend time turning things off, uninstalling stuff, and changing default settings. With Arch you'll spend time tuning which modules to load, installing stuff, and configuring the default settings. Both take the same amount of time. I just find it easier for me to add exactly what I need/want rather than remove the cruft.

[jman98]

I sympathize with the original poster's plight. If he wants to do Kubuntu/Ubuntu, I'd unfortunately advise NOT doing updates until he gets more familiar with how Linux works. It is ridiculously to easy to hose your video if you're not familiar with how X windows works and it's probably beyond the original poster's ability to fix. Ubuntu and it's derivatives don't always play nice with some Nvidia cards and we found out the hard way that the only thing that worked was to get the drivers from Nvidia and install them instead of trying to get them via Ubuntu's package manager. It still took some tweaking to get X windows happy. The original poster has an Nvidia video card, so no, I am not all surprised that he has problems. He might try to find a Linux hacker somewhere who is willing to do the work for him with the video card. The system supplied drivers do work, but they don't give full screen resolution and getting that to work involves a tricky update, as I've already said.

[LSchafroth]

You are right, I meant DARWIN!!! oops. I'm such a newbie.


I downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 and played around with Gnome. It is pretty plain jain and feels like I'm using my old Atari ST again. I kind of like it. Simple and fast.

I did a installation of KDE onto Ubuntu with the help of http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/kde.
That went very smooth and I love being able to switch between Gnome and KDE.

So far so good. I am currently running it on my MacBook Pro with Fusion 1.1.1. It is pretty darn fast even with virtualization. I think I will build a partition specific for Linux so I can triple boot Leopard, XP and Linux. I use the RefiT boot loader on the Mac and it works pretty slick.

If I boot to the Live CD for Ubuntu, will it let me split the existing Windows (BootCamp) partition without messing anything up?

I really appreciate the help everyone is giving me. I will be doing archlinux too. I want to do a GUI based one and a cli only one so I learn everything.

Thanks!

LS

[disturbed1]

If I boot to the Live CD for Ubuntu, will it let me split the existing Windows (BootCamp) partition without messing anything up?

I really appreciate the help everyone is giving me. I will be doing archlinux too. I want to do a GUI based one and a cli only one so I learn everything.

Thanks!

LS

Ask on the Ubuntu forums about your BootCamp questions. Most Linux will rewrite your MBR to include their loader, usually Grub or Lilo. On Windows systems it isn't uncommon for this to make it wipe out the Windows boot loader, and make impossible to boot Windows. That is until you ask for help on how to edit/configure Grub to fix the problem.

jman98 is 100% correct. Just doing a simple update can hose your entire system. Reminds of the problems I had once service pack 2 came out for XP. That was a nightmare in some cases, not so bad in others. Just like XP service pack 2 issues and work arounds, 99.9% of the problems you'd encounter with Linux are well documented some where. Just remember, google is your friend. Besure to include either Linux or Ubuntu as the first word of your search. The nice thing about Linux, it's easy to get to a command line and fix the system. Either by recovery mode from grub or another Live CD. I remember back in the day fscking up my system, and having to use links, Pine, and or Mutt to browse forums or mailing lists to fix my system. Thankfully now, Live CDs are all the rave. Though with Slackware, I still use Links from the console to get to nvidia.com and grab some drivers on a fresh install.

If you plan on using Ubuntu for a while here's some good links -
http://www.uboontu.com/
http://packages.ubuntu.com/
http://getdeb.net/
http://ubuntuforums.org/
https://help.ubuntu.com/

[GMaq]

Hi Again,
If you can hold off a few more weeks then Ubuntu 8.04 will be out of beta and is noteworthy for a couple of reasons:

- The new "WUBI" installer will supposedly give more options for test drive HD installs and will make it very easy to install within Windows

-8.04 is the LTS (long term support) successor to Ubuntu 6.06 and will be supported by Ubuntu until 2014.

This will make for a very stable long term platform that should lend itself very well to educational applications since it won't constantly be in a state of flux.

I will be upgrading after it hits the streets for a while.

Anyway just another option to think about.

[Vid-Kid]

I then did Kubuntu since KDE sounded like the best GUI for me. The installation was a snap, very fast, very easy. Done in less than 20 minutes. All applications worked and all drivers installed for all devices. So I got brave and did the updates. It comlained about something having a process locked even though nothing else was running. After the reboot, FILE MISSING.....

So I tried a fresh install of it again. Booted great. Updates ran, complained about it being locked and unabled to access the files to update. upon reboot it asked for my username and password and would only boot into a CLI mode. The GUI is now gone.

I run Kubuntu 7.10 as well and the issue you describe is a known bug in that version when the initial updates are installed. There is a bugfix request in to fix it. In the meantime, the solution when you get that error is:

1. Close the "Process Locked" error window and the Package Updater completely. You may see a button to perform a Full Upgrade. Don't click it. Just choose No or Quit. Don't reboot.
2. In the main menu, go to System/Konsole Terminal Program
3. At the prompt, type "sudo dpkg --configure -a" (without the quotes).
4. Enter your user password.
5. You will see a prompt come up about a package conflict. Type Y to choose "Use the package maintainer's version"
6. The rest of the packages will then install successfully.
7. Close the Terminal screen.

It's a one time exercise, thankfully. I've never had to do that since in Kubuntu.

For me, I had problems with Ubuntu 7.10 and my Intel chipset video card. Kubuntu 7.10 has been solid as a rock though.

BTW, I found that solution in the Ubuntu Community forum. Their forums are awesome with answers to almost everything you can think of. If you can't find an answer, then just ask in the forum.

[LSchafroth]

1. Close the "Process Locked" error window and the Package Updater completely. You may see a button to perform a Full Upgrade. Don't click it. Just choose No or Quit. Don't reboot.
2. In the main menu, go to System/Konsole Terminal Program
3. At the prompt, type "sudo dpkg --configure -a" (without the quotes).
4. Enter your user password.
5. You will see a prompt come up about a package conflict. Type Y to choose "Use the package maintainer's version"
6. The rest of the packages will then install successfully.
7. Close the Terminal screen.

Too late! I reinstalled Kubuntu with the AMD64 version. Did all the updates and now I get the GRUB Error 15 error, and YES google was my friend. It was a different filename in the boot file and I will boot to the CD and fix it. I then will have to reset the updater to get the locked error fixed. I will let you know in a few minutes.

LS

PS I must have came into SP2 on XP late after updates to apps and etc. I have never once had a bad SP2 install. 100% successful. SP3 beta however.....

[Nelson37]

IMO you are going at this all backwards.

Rather than settling on one combination that you like, and then finding out if it will run the needed apps, or if the available substitute is acceptable, AND if it will run correctly on available hardware, go the other direction.

If your vudeo cards are a problem and there is no budget to change them, it does not really matter if you like the one with the pretty interface, it's can you live with the problems.

Find out what works well with your hardware and runs the apps you have to have, then choose from that more limited set of options.

[LSchafroth]

I now have Kubuntu 64 Bit AMD running with full graphics support and all hardware is working.

The last update failed and left the boot file with a .BAK extention thus giving me the Error 15: File Not Found.

I renamed it back, did a apt-get clean all and a apt-get update. It forced me to do a dpkg --config -a and it fixed everything.

I really like the look of Kubuntu and it is pretty darn fast on my machine now. I am a hacker so I am downloading KDE 4.0.2 right now.

I see you can do apt-get or aptitude to get files. Which of those should I use or standardize on? Or are they one in the same?

I REALLY appreciate the help I am getting here. I know Linux users are a close group and love to help and I am seeing that now.

Lannie

PS Typing this on Firefox in KDE 3 now.

[Vid-Kid]

I now have Kubuntu 64 Bit AMD running with full graphics support and all hardware is working.

The last update failed and left the boot file with a .BAK extention thus giving me the Error 15: File Not Found.

I renamed it back, did a apt-get clean all and a apt-get update. It forced me to do a dpkg --config -a and it fixed everything.

I really like the look of Kubuntu and it is pretty darn fast on my machine now. I am a hacker so I am downloading KDE 4.0.2 right now.

I see you can do apt-get or aptitude to get files. Which of those should I use or standardize on? Or are they one in the same?

I REALLY appreciate the help I am getting here. I know Linux users are a close group and love to help and I am seeing that now.

Lannie

PS Typing this on Firefox in KDE 3 now.

Regarding your apt-get vs. aptitude question, I use apt-get at the command-line and System\Adept Package Manager if I want to search and install packages via the KDE GUI. They are both installed by default in Kubuntu and they do the job well. Aptitude also gets installed by Kubuntu and has a bit more flexibility than apt-get, but it is just my personal choice to use apt-get.

I use Ubuntu 7.10 Server AMD64 and then setup VMWare Server with Kubuntu 64 and Windows (among others) as virtual servers on it. That way I can play around on the virtual servers, turning them on and off at will, and if I mess it up then I can just revert to the previous virtual server snapshots without having to rebuild my physical server.

[kenmo]

I recommend Mepis 7. It's simple to install. I was an Opensuse user untill I tried ver 10.3 and Yast gave me problems (failing on dependencies)....

The only thing I dislike about Mepis, it doesn't support Gnome. I've been searching on the Mpislovers forum but it appears it's a no go with version 7. Earlier versions were fine for Gnome but not 7....

[LSchafroth]

So far I have settled in with Kubuntu with KDE 3.x

KDE 4 was horrible looking, or maybe it was just the theme I got and early beta.

Overall I am impressed with it. It is very stable. Not quite as fast as XP but really good.

It is not very good at all with multimedia, such as viewing MPG, AVI and etc and most likely is my lack of knowing what the good apps are for each type.

I REALLY appreciate all the help everyone has given me so far!

LS