DIY Street Linux Thread.

[KimTjik]

Which reminds me, I was having a problem getting any virtual drive apps to work. I heard good things about Acetone, but couldn't get it to install for some reason.

 

I suppose you mean how to play an iso-file in for example xine or kaffeine. If so you don't need any program besides the players of course. Do like this:

 

xine "dvd://path/to/your.iso"

 

Many Linux applications are more powerful than expected.

 

Otherwise you can always use the mount command with the -o loop option. I think if you google it you'll get more and better information than I can give you here in one post.

[ReelFiles]

Cool, that works for me. I was originally looking for a GUI application that can do it, but that's simple enough. Thanks, bro.

[KimTjik]

Except for that everybody has to start somewhere, and jumping onto anything more in-depth just scares Linux newbies away, myself included. Start with something simple like Ubuntu and work your way up to something more complicated when you master the basics and if you ever feel the need to.

 

... and even if you would decide to not go for "anything more in-depth" you're in good company, because this is how Linus Torvalds answered the following question:

A curiosity: which is your favourite distribution, and which on e do you consider more secure?

 

I don’t really tend to care much, I’ve changed distributions over the years, and to me the most important thing tends to be that they are easy to install and upgrade, and allow me to do the only part I really care about - the kernel.

 

So the only major distribution I’ve never used has actually been Debian, exactly because that has traditionally been harder to install. Which sounds kind of strange, since Debian is also considered to be the “hard-core technical” distribution, but that’s literally exactly what I personally do not want in a distro. I’ll take the nice ones with simple installers etc, because to me, that’s the whole and only point of using a distribution in the first place.

 

So I’ve used SuSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, YDL (I ran my main setup on PowerPC-based machines for a while, and YDL - Yellow Dog Linux - ended up the easiest choice). Right now, most of my machines seem to have Fedora 7 on then, but that’s only a statement of fact, not meant to be that I think it’s necessarily “better” than the other distros.

[ReelFiles]

I think Ubuntu and it's spinoffs like kubuntu are taking the lead lately. The French parliament recently announced the French Government would be switching over to kubuntu, and a lot of Canadian and Venezuelan institutions are switching over too.

 

In the short time that I've been using ubuntu 100% on my rig and about 95% of the time on wifey's rig I've found out that beneath the simple user interface ubuntu can be customized just as hardcore as most other distributions, I've tried.

 

The only time we have to switch back to XP is when we want to web cam on msn with family in New York. The webcam support for aMSN seems somewhat limited, so unless I can find a portable version of Windows Live Messenger that I can run through wine, we'll just have to keep dual booting. I've tried a portable version (8.5) but it keeps crashing with missing .dll files.

[AnUnknownSource]

I don't think I'd have any problems compiling software myself, and using Gentoo... I've done it before (long ago) I'll give both a try :-) Who needs easy installs? Somethings gota keep me busy for a while ;-)

[wildman2]

Small update.

Cinema 4d is installed and I am using it.(was a little tricky)

PSP8 refuses to install.

Installed photoshop elements instead, works good.

Bryce 5 installs but does a lot of wierdness before becoming totally useless.(open gl problem with interface my guess)

All in all not running too bad.Most of what I use works now.Been Ms free for 2 days...wahoo (well it's a step anyhow.)

[ReelFiles]

I am still not completely Windows free on wifey's rig, been trying to get a portable version of MSN live messenger to run through wine, but no go so far. aMSN's webcam features suck.

 

Got Beryl installed and running good now, the effects are sweet and don't bog down the system like XP or Vista does Any windows or dropdown menus I close burn up, gotta love that. I disabled the cube though, since we only use one desktop and that was affecting the speed with the Beryl animations enabled.

[boywander]

I'm having a go at using 64 bit Feisty without making an butt of myself (...stop sniggering).

 

nV drivers installed without issue through Automatix2, surprisingly.

Small annoyance - always starts up with refresh at 43Hz interlaced, even after I've amended the settings in nV display properties and saved them to xorg.conf. :confused: Anyone have suggestions? Probably something very simple.

 

Flash was just as easy.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=425672

You need ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk packages in Synaptic installed first.

 

Beryl was always buggy for me (even built in effects in Feisty are) - occasional crashes, windows running slightly offscreen, etc. Eye candy be blowed, when it becomes an annoyance.

[KimTjik]

nV drivers installed without issue through Automatix2, surprisingly.

Small annoyance - always starts up with refresh at 43Hz interlaced, even after I've amended the settings in nV display properties and saved them to xorg.conf. :confused: Anyone have suggestions? Probably something very simple.

 

Flash was just as easy.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=425672

You need ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk packages in Synaptic installed first.

 

Beryl was always buggy for me (even built in effects in Feisty are) - occasional crashes, windows running slightly offscreen, etc. Eye candy be blowed, when it becomes an annoyance.

Refresh rate: it could be one of those Nvidia driver bugs which seems to be a heritage through many versions. What will be the output of the following command?:

nvidia-settings -q RefreshRate

 

I can't say that you encounter the same issue, but as an example I see 50Hz as the highest for my monitor. If I run the above command 50Hz proves to be 75Hz, which is actually the absolute max my monitor can do. So it's possible your 43Hz proves to be something like 60Hz. Test and tell me the answer.

 

Buggy 3D desktop effects? I'm sorry but I can't help you with Ubuntu. I've not encountered a single crash myself in either Fedora 7 64bit or PCLinuxOS (don't use PCLinuxOs much, but at least enough hours to tell whether it Beryl crashes or not; Fedora 7 64bit I use as a working hourse so Beryl isn't running a lot on it).

[ReelFiles]

Automatix is the shiznit, that's where I found out about Swiftfox, which runs much better than plain Firefox, on this NF2 rig with 256MB RAM.

 

Beryl won't crash on me, but fullscreen windows are a few pixels past the screen edge, when using Emerald. Which drivers are you using? NV or Nvidia? I automatically updated mine with Envy.

 

https://launchpad.net/envy/

 

I got the same thing with my refresh rate and I do think it's just interpreting it wrong.

[boywander]

I was talking about the values given in nvidia settings before.

 

It's funny about that, I played with the refresh in the built in Ubuntu res settings, (the values offered were really low apart from one of 130Hz or something... which has now disappeared...) and the nvidia res/refresh settings now persist as they should - 1024x768 @ 85Hz, and the terminal output of that command agrees.

[KimTjik]

Good for you boywander!

 

In Fedora 7 64bit I get the following output:

- NVIDIA Display settings --> 60.02Hz

- Fedora Display settings --> 50Hz

- Command "nvidia-settings -q RefreshRate" --> 75Hz

 

He, he, looks like Nvidia still has some ruff edges.