Foo - *inux Installation ~ Woe is me.

Praises be to a swap-able drive bay! :beer:

Got my Linux for Dummies box and Fedora Core install disk that came with the book.

I Imaged the ISO's for Linspire & Xandros, swapped my XP drive for a newly formated HD, put my Fedora disk in the CD-ROM and puhsed the power button.

Fedora gives me a bunch of white text on a black screen, text starts rolling by at speed and stops. :(

I reboot with the Linspire image disk, I get some screens that require interaction and I think, "WOW! I'm moving now. :) Only to get to the part where Linspire aparently goes into a video test and the display goes wonky, the gateway EV500 monitor reports that the Horizontal Frequency is 74.9hz but the monitor will only handle 70hz. I can't read the screen so I shut it down. :mad:

Dinner is ready so I take a breather and enjoy the company of my family over some rice & chign. :rolleyes:

After dinner I put the xtandros image disk in the CD drive push the power button Xandros starts to do its' thing and I get all the neat GUI screens for the set-up config, etc... I'm clicking "NEXT" like there's no tomorrow, I'm grinnin' like a fool. Oops. I notice the Installation Summary screen mentions that it did recognize any network adapters. I figure no biggie, I'll snag an ISO for the NIC driver after it's set-up.

I click Finish and off it goes. It starts the setup, unloading and installing all kinds of packages, I'm happy. Next thing I know it hangs up. The progress indicator stopped at "Installing package setting up xandros-nvidia-modules-2.4-24-xl". :crash: :cry:

The coincidence is that I have a ASUS K8N-VM MoBo with the Nvidia NForce NIC and an Nvidia GeForce 6100 built on board.

Sombody please tell me why Linux is such a PITA to get running. I had similar problems when I tried to get it running pn a PII box years ago. Gusss my geek factor just isn't that high. Am I relegated to Windwoes for the rest of my life?

I hate to do this, but have you tried ubuntu yet? I prefer OpenBSD but it's not for the faint of heart. Barring technical incompatability issues (which could jinx Ubuntu for you as well), I don't know anyone who has tried Ubuntu and not had it work.

Not yet. I have a SUSE ISO I can image. I might as well grab the OpenBSD ISO and image it too. I'm not afraid of the technical aspect and can pick up on how it works if I have a good resource for help... Push enough buttons and it will either work or crash. If it crashes, I restart the process.

Praises be to a swapable drive :beer:

OpenBSD is a text-adventure until you properly configure graphics. That said, if you install the X packages, it installs a sane configuration of X.Org that works at least minimally on almost anything, but I don't know that it will like NVidia stuff. OpenBSD.org has a handy walk-through for installation though.

If you don't know some UNIX commands, it will be a steep learning curve.

Ubuntu tends to have the best out of the box hardware support, so I second that. Some distros are absolute PITAs because they automate the install, but then have craptacular hardware support. Ummm... if you're o.k with the command line, I really recommend printing and reading the entire Gentoo install guide, and maybe installing it if you'd like. Then try installing Ubuntu, or Arch ;), but that's just personal preference.

OpenBSD is a text-adventure until you properly configure graphics. That said, if you install the X packages, it installs a sane configuration of X.Org that works at least minimally on almost anything, but I don't know that it will like NVidia stuff. OpenBSD.org has a handy walk-through for installation though.

If you don't know some UNIX commands, it will be a steep learning curve.

Totally unfamilair with Unix command line and directory structure. I have a feeling that this is going to be an adventure :)

Fedora?

Ferdora sucks.

Get Ubuntu with the new version of Beryl (OMG 3D Desktop!!!!1), it's r0xz0rz ur s0xz0rz.

Wot?!?!? Joo got me syched. Probably won't work with my hardware. :(

I'm installing ubuntu on my macbook (okay, in Parallels) right now.

I am kind of anti-linux but I'm definitely way more anti-windoh's than anything.

Wot?!?!? Joo got me syched. Probably won't work with my hardware. :(

Pwnage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLLb4RIo2Fo).

Do the make a Mac OS that works on the PC? I'm not really anti-windows, I just want to broaden my horizons a bit

I am very happy with my Fedora setup. I've run it since FC4.
All I did was stick the CD in hte ROM and boot from it. Installation was prettier than windows, and easier.
Fedoraforums.org has some experienced folks, I do recall hearing about nVidia problems.

google for OSX86.

If you check my resume' I have experience in pretty much everything. I'm not anti-anything per se. My horizons are broad enough that I can be choosy, though. And with any luck, you'll get there too.

Pwnage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLLb4RIo2Fo).
And just how much video RAM do you need for that? :eek:

google for OSX86.

If you check my resume' I have experience in pretty much everything. I'm not anti-anything per se. My horizons are broad enough that I can be choosy, though. And with any luck, you'll get there too.
:) I look deeper later.

I've always wanted to try to run linux, but have run into a few obstacles.

I can't give up my windows computer just yet, and I don't have another one to experiment on.
I'm too lazy to learn the unix commands and file structure.
I have no earthly idea which of the billion distros to use.

As soon as I get over those, I'll be in business. I despise windows, but I find it's often a neccesary evil.

I hate to do this, but have you tried ubuntu yet? I prefer OpenBSD but it's not for the faint of heart. Barring technical incompatability issues (which could jinx Ubuntu for you as well), I don't know anyone who has tried Ubuntu and not had it work.
Agreed, my Linux box is running Ubuntu on a PII machine w/ 6.2 gig HD and 128Mgb RAM (Barely!). It did install though. You might also look into BLAG Linux, available for free.

I have no earthly idea which of the billion distros to use.


Welcome to one of the reasons I don't care much for "Linux" - No one knows if you're talking about Red Hat Enterprise, Linspire, Fedora, Debian, SuSE, Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, Mandriva, Knoppix, CentOS, DSL, Ubuntu, or any of the other bizarre spinoffs of them.

The big problem here is that one can be "pretty good at Linux" but be absolutely useless for your company's new Linux project.

:) I look deeper later.
While I'm thinking about it, PM Crosseyed Cricket.....
He's a Debian developer and should have some real insight. Especially for Ubuntu (Debian type distro).:D

Vega is a freakin' slug. This whole thread is over her white-haired haid. :cry:

Sorry, Stacey! I'd help ya if I could! :(

[But UNIX, I know. :D]

I reccomend going with a basic slackware install (shells and drivers only)...then adding components/troubleshooting drivers one by one, until you have a working system.

Yes, it's a MASSIVE pain in the rump, but it will make for a better overall system. Once you have that core system set-up, make a backup of that drive! Keep that around for all time, or until some hardware is changed...then put that backup drive in and alter the backup to work with the new hardware.

That way, if something goes toes up, you have a functional system drive you can put in, then do data recovery on the other drive.

I used to run swappable bays on all my computers.

Welcome to one of the reasons I don't care much for "Linux" - No one knows if you're talking about Red Hat Enterprise, Linspire, Fedora, Debian, SuSE, Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, Mandriva, Knoppix, CentOS, DSL, Ubuntu, or any of the other bizarre spinoffs of them.

The big problem here is that one can be "pretty good at Linux" but be absolutely useless for your company's new Linux project.


True, but RedHat is for the most part the "standard" in the corporate world, it's mostly home users that are obfuscating things.

Thing is to actually know linux, means that you are past 90% of the variances in distros....after all they have the same core, and shells. It's just the package selecitons, and the package management systems they use that will vary. Like if you don't like RPM....you can go around it and just install stuff the old fashioned way.

I've always wanted to try to run linux, but have run into a few obstacles.

I can't give up my windows computer just yet, and I don't have another one to experiment on.
I'm too lazy to learn the unix commands and file structure.
I have no earthly idea which of the billion distros to use.

As soon as I get over those, I'll be in business. I despise windows, but I find it's often a neccesary evil.
If you want to give unix/linux a try without totally sacrificing a machine or the current OS install, you have a few choices. You can either install under a VM or you can play around with some of the many livecds out there. For linux, you have such choices as Knoppix and Helix and for FreeBSD, you have FreesBIE and Frenzy. For NetBSD, there's NeWBIE and for OpenBSD, there's OliveBSD. There are many others. You can even try OpenSolaris ala BeleniX. Just do a Google search to get at the distro sites.

OpenBSD is a text-adventure until you properly configure graphics.
And this is a good thing. I can't even begin to tell you the number of times I've run across some OS distro that tries to initialise some fancy GUI installer app that ultimately fails because it can't handle the graphics device. And then you're left looking at some stupid error message telling you that you simply can't get there from here. You don't even have a good way of doing a minimal or partway install so you can tweak in a configuration to get the GUI up for the rest of the installer to run. A wise man was once heard to say...


7-bit ASCII is a great leveller.

I needed a few more nameserver and so just recently installed a bunch of OpenBSD systems on SPARCstations over serial console. It took me less than 10 minutes to get them started and I could simply walk away while the text based installer went to town configuring the drives, downloading the right install sets and plopping everything onto the drives. I also did all this from remote.

If you want to give unix/linux a try without totally sacrificing a machine or the current OS install, you have a few choices. You can either install under a VM or you can play around with some of the many livecds out there. For linux, you have such choices as Knoppix and Helix and for FreeBSD, you have FreesBIE and Frenzy. For NetBSD, there's NeWBIE and for OpenBSD, there's OliveBSD. There are many others. You can even try OpenSolaris ala BeleniX. Just do a Google search to get at the distro sites.
I have a Knoppix image and I got it to load successfully... except it too didn't recognise my on-board nVidia LAN card. Looks like I'll have to put my 3Com card in. <shakes head>

Ok, I did some poking around at the distro sites for some of the mentioned flavors. It looks like I 'might' be successful with Ubuntu as they have an AMD64 ISO, it's downloading now, so we'll see what happens. <fingers crossed>

True, but RedHat is for the most part the "standard" in the corporate world, it's mostly home users that are obfuscating things.

Thing is to actually know linux, means that you are past 90% of the variances in distros....after all they have the same core, and shells. It's just the package selecitons, and the package management systems they use that will vary. Like if you don't like RPM....you can go around it and just install stuff the old fashioned way.

There are also configuration differences and what "equivalent" software is uses in the core install. Some might choose to use xinetd and others to use vanilla tcp wrappers, then there's the whole difference in configuration file structure and filesystem utilization. Getting past these differences is simple once one understands a few shell tricks.

I guess it's the retro grouch in me that misses the days when everyone who ran a Linux workstation actually had a pretty good understanding of how to use it. Not that I at all mind the next wave of Linux users who use it daily but don't have a grasp on anything more than one specific distro's GUI and package system. But they do muddy the water a bit when looking for people with Linux skills.

There are also configuration differences and what "equivalent" software is uses in the core install. Some might choose to use xinetd and others to use vanilla tcp wrappers, then there's the whole difference in configuration file structure and filesystem utilization. Getting past these differences is simple once one understands a few shell tricks.

I guess it's the retro grouch in me that misses the days when everyone who ran a Linux workstation actually had a pretty good understanding of how to use it. Not that I at all mind the next wave of Linux users who use it daily but don't have a grasp on anything more than one specific distro's GUI and package system. But they do muddy the water a bit when looking for people with Linux skills.
Awe c'mon... be nice. Even you were a noob once. :( :cry:

Ok, I did some poking around at the distro sites for some of the mentioned flavors. It looks like I 'might' be successful with Ubuntu as they have an AMD64 ISO, it's downloading now, so we'll see what happens. <fingers crossed>
:crash: :cry: :crash: :cry: :crash:

Another one in the "Don't Work" pile!

BLAG, SUSE & Mandrake are next. Ponders... My rig can't be too current, can it? Maybe I should drag out my old PII rig and give it a try in that.

Linux can be a real PITA to install and configure. What issues are you getting when you try to install Ubuntu?

Edit: Once you get it up and running though, it's great!

Linux can be a real PITA to install and configure. What issues are you getting when you try to install Ubuntu?

Edit: Once you get it up and running though, it's great!
I get the Install GUI click the Install option, some white text on a black screen scrolls by and stops with

ubuntu decompressing linux... done
booting the kernel.
_ <----- blinking


displayed on the screen and appears to hang there. I've waited 15 minutes for it to do something but it just sat there. No HD or CD-ROM activity, no response from the keyboard. I ran Md5Sum on the ISO for Ubuntu and I got a good download. <shrug> I don't know what's going on. :(

I get the Install GUI click the Install option, some white text on a black screen scrolls by and stops with

ubuntu decompressing linux... done
booting the kernel.
_ <----- blinking


displayed on the screen and appears to hang there. I've waited 15 minutes for it to do something but it just sat there. No HD or CD-ROM activity, no response from the keyboard. I ran Md5Sum on the ISO for Ubuntu and I got a good download. <shrug> I don't know what's going on. :(
It took an hour when I got to that stage. Give it longer and see what happens.

It took an hour when I got to that stage. Give it longer and see what happens.
O Rly?!?!?

Will do. I've got some rat cages to clean and some chilli and cornbread to make. I'll let it run until dinner and see what happens. I'll check in later tonight. Thanks!

do you have vm workstation (http://www.vmware.com/)? makes it alot easier to play with linux distros. worth the money. i've been able to try out a couple different *nix

do you have vm workstation (http://www.vmware.com/)? makes it alot easier to play with linux distros. worth the money. i've been able to try out a couple different *nix

You can do the same thing with virtual server too. (I though vm was free now) and ya it makes setting up test sites a lot easier.

:crash: :cry: :crash: :cry: :crash:

Another one in the "Don't Work" pile!

BLAG, SUSE & Mandrake are next. Ponders... My rig can't be too current, can it? Maybe I should drag out my old PII rig and give it a try in that.

some hardware still to this day doesnt work very well

usb on older via chipsets
ati video cards
winmodems or any other hardware that was designed to be 100% software driven
printers, postscript is usually no problem, others are very hit and miss, HP is one of the better choices

nvidia probably has one the best linux driver or kernel module programs in the business, they are one the few though, and even their nforce motherboard chipsets are supported, this is rare

oh, ya, all your doing by switching distros doesnt change whats underneath, they all use the same basic GNU/GPL software

what you are running into with these problems is that many distros have created automated scripts to try to figure out what hardware you do have and what to install or setup accordingly, when they screw up you will usually end up with a locked up crashed system, or video that doesnt work right

many many systems out there need a little TLC when setting them up, and it usually means getting your hands dirty and doing a bit of commandline editing and work, if your new to linux that makes it essentially an impossible task

Here is the problem I encounter with the different OS' on my machines. Until more software is available that is written with linux users in mind, people will refuse to switch over for the pain in the arse reason that they have to switch back and forth.

I run an older version of RH on both my webserver and fileserver @ the house, and I only reboot them when power goes out and the backups die :D.
My studio machine runs w2k unfortunately since most of the editing softwares available are only compatible with MAC or WIN. Running them through WINE would drive me nuts so I succumb to the pressures and take the easy route which is to run WIN.
My laptop runs XP because @ work we run 2k3 server with all win2k stations etc and PPC handhelds.
Once again the software there utilizes terminal services and they haven't come up with a linux compatible version :(. They promise but never come through...
My bedroom desktop runs a dualboot of fedora and win2k, but the g/f and I use fedora and we love it. I still end up having to use w2k though to sync up my pda. I thought about converting my PDA to linux but it just meant a hell of a lot more time tweaking things, which is the last thing I want to spend my little free time doing.

I had a ton of issues setting it up on my g/f's laptop....... I finally said to hell with it and put her WIN back on. Not worth it unless you have spare time and interested in a challenge. lol....

Windows. It works.

What software do you need to use in Windows? There's alternatives for almost everything.

Audacity is a pretty powerful audio recording and editing suite. My dad uses it in his studio.

Need word processing? Spreadsheets? Presentation Stuff? OpenOffice has support for all major formats and there are now a few different choices for web-based spreadsheets and word processing, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, for example. Just need a good word processor with spell check and don't care about other productivity software? AbiWord is the ticket.

Web browsing? Firefox.

Graphics design and editing? GIMP, or Gimpshop if you're already used to Photoshop.

E-Mail and contact management? Thunderbird.

3D Graphics design? Blender.

Calendar and scheduling? Sunbird.

AIM/Yahoo/MSN/GTalk/Jabber? GAIM.

Filesharing? Azeurus or eMule.

Playing DVDs or videos? VideoLan VLC

Playing MP3s and podcasts? XMMS.

Need to VPN to work? You're not stuck, VPNc supports several kinds of VPN solutions (I used it successfully to connect to a Cisco VPN for my last job)

So unless you have a specific application for business, I'm telling you that most home-users can run whatever they want, because all those applications, or similar open-source ones, can run on Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD, and other operating systems. And if you use Windows for games, STOP IT. The 360, Wii and PS3 are blindingly fast compared to a PC, because they don't require all that overhead for a full operating system.

I'm OS agnostic. I used to play the advocacy stuff (Linux, Mac, BSD, OS/2), but these days, I use what works best for a client or job.

For E-mail, a small server with Linux or *BSD is best because of the availability of filtering and antispam stuff (spamassassin, clamav, amavis, etc.) Add samba, and that takes care of a lot of workgroup needs (including virus removal and defanging of viruses and buffer overrun attempts in spam email.) A cron job on the server firing off some antivirus scanner helps make sure that nothing stored on the server is infected.

For storing usernames and passwords, (IMHO), Active Directory is king here, although I wish there were an open solution that didn't require third party GINAs (which won't work with Vista.)

Windows. It works.

Except when it decides not to, which is often.

Hey nobrainer, I'm right near you (in Olathe). And back on topic I wholeheartedly agree about broken windows.

It took an hour when I got to that stage. Give it longer and see what happens.
It stayed right here

ubuntu decompressing linux... done
booting the kernel.
_ <----- blinking

for 3 hours. :mad: :crash:

I am so ready to say fuggit!

It stayed right here

ubuntu decompressing linux... done
booting the kernel.
_ <----- blinking

for 3 hours. :mad: :crash:

I am so ready to say fuggit!
OK, sounds like a hardware issue then. At least for Linux. It can't always work on Windows specific units because of proprietary specific to Windows hardware.

I wasn't aware my hardware was Win specific. Dbl damn!

I wasn't aware my hardware was Win specific. Dbl damn!
Try open BSD (Berkeley Standard Division Unix). You may have better results, or perhaps open Solaris might be an alternative.

What software do you need to use in Windows? There's alternatives for almost everything.
To be honest, there is one single essential thing that I run which requires Windows and for which I have no good way of getting around... Visio.

It's a horrible substitute for a real CAD program.
It's bloated, sucks down memory like you wouldn't believe... especially if you load a lot of stencil sets.
It has as of recent years become increasingly unstable.
It has as of recent versions become increasingly expensive.
Everyone in my industry uses it.
It's only available for Windows.

Ugh! My solution was to build a headless Windows XP Pro box with a lot of memory. I then rdesktop into it from my unix systems. This allows me to keep my Visio session portable without having to waste a laptop or a good desktop with a head on Windows.

Tried Dia yet? I don't know what file format Visio uses, but Dia might be the ticket. Visio is clunky as hell. When I was a network engineer for a start-up company, we all used Macs and they bought a copy of Omnigraffle Pro which is flippin' sweet. Unfortunately it's commercialware, and it runs on Mac OS X not Linux.

By the way, to all Linux people. I bumped into this great post on Digg:

http://foolks.blogspot.com/2007/01/tables-of-equivalents.html

Tons of software equivalents and alternatives for Linux would-be-users stuck in a world of Windows.

I wonder if you can put Visio (and XP too) on its own VM and run it under a VMWare session.

The one thing that Windows does which no OS can do, sadly enough... Active Directory. Pretty much everything but CAD can be done by some open source program, but Active Directory just plain can't be moved off the Windows. Yes, you can use a solution like pGina to get Windows boxes to use an OpenLDAP server for usernames/passwords... but Vista doesn't support plugins in the auth area, period... so its Active Directory, buying some INSANELY ($5000+) commercial solution that allows a UNIX box to pretend to be a Windows 2000 box, or nothing.