The Linux Thread

[Baddcog]

OK,

 

For some reason I got a bug to try Linux again.

 

Tried Kubuntu maybe a year+ ago and never got around some issues. Mainly my soundcard/drivers. I've also got some other programs that I want to use that I'm not sure will work in Linux/Wine so it's gonna have to be dual boot.

 

I stumbled across Linux Mint 9 so I'm trying that this time.

 

Of course this means headaches, issues....

 

Win7 is great for partitioning, best windows yet. You can increase/decrease/add/delete partitions really easily. EXCEPT the Windows boot drive. Once you instal 7 it can't be changed. I had enough fore thought to make one partition for it, and made it larger than needed so I'd ehave a bit of space for updates/whatever. So without reninstall of win7

 

Unfortuantely I DIDN'T have enough foresight to make it large enough for the 8 GB of Linux (I have 5 GB extra). And to dual boot (easily at least) Mint 9 is supposed to be on same partition next to Windows.

 

So far the best I can do is to have it installed on same HD as windows (different partition), or seperate HD. Either way the grub boot menu doesn't ever show.

Having it on a seperate HD and choosing that HD for boot ALMOST worked. It says 'loading grub', then it says error 22 and hangs.

I did edit the boot sequence files and was sure I had the correct HD selected (/dev/sdc3) (HD 3, partition 3).

 

Not being able to start up Linux makes it hard to apply fixes, alot of stuff doesn't seem to work correctly off the liveCD. I don't know if it detects the installed grub or not, etc..

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I've got a post at the mint9 forums but no bites yet.

 

Guess I'm asking for advice. One issue I had with Kubuntu was the boot defaulted to linux and getting it to boot in Vista was a pain.

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My next step is to physically unplug the windows HD, instal linux on the backup get it working, then work on the grub to dual boot. Got to clean up a disc full of movies first, that's 120gigs.

 

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Depending on what programs I can run Win7 might vanish. The main one right now is Max as I don't want to learn a new 3d app, but that might also change if I can find the Max interface for Blender.

(might have to keep Win7 for some games too).

 

I can drop PS for Gimp. What else is there? TDM, DR, PS, Max... anything else I can use whatever it takes.

[nbohr1more]

You should be able to use a Gnome Parted live CD to shrink the Windows partition. It has an easy to use GUI interface. Just make sure to let Windows do a disk check after you make the change.

[lost_soul]

For your grub problem, are you using Grub 2? I think Ubuntu switched to it back in 9.10 and onward. They say the user isn't supposed to edit the grub configuration by hand now. There's a command-line program called "update-grub" that you can run. It will detect all operating systems on any HDD you have plugged into the system and generate the menu file for you. It sure beats having to configure that crap by hand!

 

I myself recently switched to Debian. I'm very happy with it (the testing version). I've got TDM, Thief 1 and Thief 2 here, as well as some great online games like Urban Terror. I've also got tuns of older games installed and running great. I created a backup of the Debian system when I first installed it, so I can just blast that image onto any of my own PCs. Then I use resize2fs to grow the partition and run update-grub and it is all ready to go. I've considered installing the "experimental" or "unstable" versions of Debian on one of these old junker machines I've got here. Perhaps if I get bored enough I'll try it.

[Baddcog]

Cool, I'll try Gnome Parted. I tried a windows based rogram that was supposed to do it, but of course the free demo version wouldn't combine partitions and that's the only reason that program is needed.

 

I had to DL/install grub and do the update-grub thing. And then the thing with the terminal/boot sequences.

 

I was just going with Mint9 (gnome desktop I guess) instead of the 3 other options (debian was one I think). So many options/versions to choose from and I don't know the differences really, so I think for now the base is probably good.

I gotta say I really like the look and feel of Mint, maybe more than 7, deffinately more than Kubuntu. The green is well, refreshing.

[Baddcog]

I'm basically screwed now.

 

after gnome parted (and the grub stuff previuosly) I can't even get the live CD to boot up with only a wiped hd installed, even tried a fresh win7 install, then cd boot. fail.

 

Gnome parted insatlled a file but after that??? Tried by usb first and CD next. The directions say do the boot, type a command, says it installed something. No instructions after that.

[lost_soul]

What exact error are you getting?

[Baddcog]

No errors.

 

Just now if I put in the LiveCD, it starts to load, I can tab to the load menu, the blinking dots show. screen goes black (it did go black for a bit before the desktiop came up before), then my monitor shuts down like it's hibernating.

 

No Gnome desktop at all. I have a fresh windows instal ready to instal mint on but the disc won't get that far.

 

I can instal it inside windows I belive through the CD menu, but don't want to. I want a seperate instal.

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And with Gnoma parted I'm not sure what to do, I followed the USB and CD instructs, they say enter command then follow on screen instructs, but there's never anything on screen afterwards.

[nbohr1more]

Is your Optical drive connected via SATA? You may need to set your SATA to legacy in BIOS...

[Baddcog]

hmm, maybe I'll look at that. The disc was working fine on Sunday though.

 

before gnome parted (I think whatever it installed is what caused the issue)

[nbohr1more]

I've hear that the Plug 'n Play snoop in Linux can sometime change BIOS settings on certain motherboards because manufacturers have faulty compliancy with Plug 'n Play that only really works with Windows. You may to need to reset your BIOS settings and remove your CMOS battery. I only saw this happen once with an Enlightenment Live CD (what a mess, it was a cool distro but I'm afraid of it because of that issue...)

[Baddcog]

Well, luckily I have a CMOS switch

 

I've tried everything by now and no answers at the mint forums yet.

 

Might as well try, I already accidently reset my OC settings F'N around in Bios. So the damage is done

 

Never did find a way to make my sata DVD 'legacy' in Bios though.

[nbohr1more]

Well, luckily I have a CMOS switch

 

Those come in handy.

 

My crappy Intel motherboard is pretty no-frills (got a deal when I worked at a local "Intel Premium Partner" PC shop...).

 

I'm still hoping that one of the PLL clockgen software over-clock programs out there will figure out the correct algorithm for my board.

[Baddcog]

Well, cleared the CMOS but still, the live disc just won't load to desktop. And that's with 2 HD's disconnected and only a fresh instal of Win7 and an un-allocated space on that HD.

 

(Also tried with all HD's plugged in).

 

Now I'm trying to make a bootable USB with Unetbootin, but it's hanging at 41%... Ah, it just finished.

[nbohr1more]

That's not a good sign. It might mean you'd have to patch the kernel driver support for SATA to work with your motherboard...

 

Good luck.

[Baddcog]

That's not a good sign. It might mean you'd have to patch the kernel driver support for SATA to work with your motherboard...

 

Good luck.

 

Well, it worked before so I don't know what happened. And the info I found on said patch said it was outdated and with a newer kernel it shouldn't matter. Also it seems ytou must run it within Linux? which is hard since I can't get the livecd to start.

 

However I do have a kubuntu cd here that just loaded fine. So I'm gonna try to instal, then see if the mint disc will load.

[Baddcog]

Who's the Dummy, is i9t you? Is it you?

 

Yes, it's me.

 

Solved.

 

My bad, don't think anyone could've helped anyway.

 

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My 5850 GPU has 2 monitor plugs. When I yanked my machine out of my desk to get to the HD cables I polugged my monitor into the wrong plugin.

 

Unfortunately I didn't notice because Win7 still came up fine. Mint 9 was probably loaded, but not detecting that DVI plugin. The load bar worked for the liveCD, just not the desktop. So seeing stuff on screen didn't help clue me into the issue.

 

Kubuntu 8.04 loaded up just fine too. Then I upgraded that to 10.4 at which point I heard some menu music AFTER the load bar, but like mint9 the liveCD never showed, just black screen/to hibernate.

So there's deffinately a detection issue with 10.4 that wasn't there in 8.04.

 

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So I'm running Mint 9 now, what versions are you guys running?

[nbohr1more]

The last Distro I had running was Intrepid Ibex 8.10...

 

Kept fighting to get my old Radeon 9500 Pro driver running stable... then I temporarily upgraded to a nvidia 7300GT and was in Linux driver heaven... Haven't gone back to try Linux since I got my HD 4650 (afraid that AGP drivers will be scarce...)

[Baddcog]

Yeah, not too stoked on what I've been hearing about the ATI driver issues. Oh, well, I'll test it out.

 

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How do I install DR though? The Wiki only says you can, the DL page leads to a launchpad page. There's Lucid and Karmic and I have no idea what that means.

 

I did DL this but can't get it to instal

 

darkradiant-plugins-darkmod_1.4.0svn5702~karmic1_amd64.deb

[nbohr1more]

Syntax:

 

dpkg -i filename.deb

 

But the package manager doesn't have Dark Radiant listed when you enable Universal?

 

 

[Baddcog]

Ah, found some hidden 'paths' one the Dl page and just stumbled across the correct place to paste em. Got DR installed.

 

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Getting tired of passwords for everything though and thought I had turned them off. Not yet I guess.

 

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Also, I have internet radio going, but can't see the window anywhere, I think I also have another pile of windows running I can't see.

 

I did minimize the amount of start up programs and whatnot. Must've turned off open program icons in the tray?

[plasticman]

Alt+Tab moves you through all the windows on the actual desktop.

 

Ctrl+Alt+Tab moves you through all the windows on all desktops.

 

I don't know how things look in Mint, but iirc it's based on Ubuntu. So my guess is look for icon in the gnome panel, right upper corner. There should be "rhythmbox" next to the volume control, when it's running.

[Baddcog]

Found some command lines that restored my menu bar after I accidentally deleted it, then then added some toolbar apps and one of them made all the internet windows pop on the bar. I had like 20 of them, lol. It was getting laggy.

 

Still having password pop ups.

 

But really diggin it so far, been messing around in all the folders, trying the different options, customizing the look and layout. Choosing programs. Pretty nice really, I think I like it more than windows, sans the not knowing what I'm doing issue.

 

DR and Blender both have buggy/glitchy rendering though. I just have a mint 9 theme, and I've tried to get rid of alpha stuff. But I don't know if there's a compatibilty mode or something I need to be in. (Like with vista/7)

 

I'm using the ati propietary drivers right now and haven't had a chance to play any games yet. But I think I can run games on Steam throguh Wine.

[Baddcog]

Well, decided to try again with the dual boot. Cleaned up my Win7 partition good and made enough space.

 

Had to set partitions myself, then hit the 'adavanced' button which I saw last time right when I clicked instal. In there it lets you select where the boot grub goes. Once I choose the correct disk I got the dual boot menu.

 

Sweet, now I can boot into either OS.

 

EXCEPT, the boot menu doesn't recognize my USB keyboard until after OS boot, so only Mint will boot up. Looks like a few other people have had this issue and I think I had it before when I tried Kubuntu. At that time I think I had a PS2 keyboard though so I could plug that in. That thing died so I took it back.

 

I have to cheap keyboards I'm trying and neither works. Neither has it's own drivers either, just plug-n-play.

 

I can change my grub to have win7 first, but then I won't be able to get mint9 to load. Arghh. All I want is dual boot long enough to get used to Blender and get DR running right.

 

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Speaking of which I have DR installed on another Mint9 HD (that's unplugged to get this HD dual partitioned) but was having glitchy windows issues, similar to windows with Aero on. So I don't know if there's a compatibility mode or something that I need to set.

 

-----games--------

 

So far I have Steam installed. So Doom3 with Steam/TDM should work.

 

Though Friend messages seem really buggy and I see them pop-up, and see the icon in my menu bar. But the window won't pop-up again when I click menu bar icon and there's a but of glitchy.

 

I tried World of Goo through Steam, but get music on start-up with a black screen. I know WoG works with Linux, but whatever they did seems to have not been ported to the steam version. I'll have to try and get the working (donate) version and see if I can patch my steam with that which might not work because that's under Wine.

 

I installed and got Torchlight working under steam. However it has no sound at all. Funny, goo is sound only, torchlight is no sound. I also got Direct X 9 installed under Wine, but changing Torchlight to Open GL didn't see to make any difference.

When I close that game the screen res stays messed up and fuzzy, so I have to reboot.

 

Trying to get SS2 going now. Got a link from Tels at TTLG.

http://www.cedega.com/explore/

[Serpentine]

EXCEPT, the boot menu doesn't recognize my USB keyboard until after OS boot, so only Mint will boot up. Looks like a few other people have had this issue and I think I had it before when I tried Kubuntu. At that time I think I had a PS2 keyboard though so I could plug that in. That thing died so I took it back.

 

Check your bios options for USB legacy modes/USB keyboard support, most desktop boards will have this as an option.

 

Speaking of which I have DR installed on another Mint9 HD (that's unplugged to get this HD dual partitioned) but was having glitchy windows issues, similar to windows with Aero on. So I don't know if there's a compatibility mode or something that I need to set.

 

Try disabling your window manager's compositing first, tho I wouldnt think it will do much unless its some ancient version of beryl/compiz. If that doesnt work it's most likely an issue with your display driver, try using the nv driver rather than nvidia in your xorg.conf (or radeonhd rather than fglfx). If you're already using the generic driver, try get the proprietary version as listed there.

 

I tried World of Goo through Steam, but get music on start-up with a black screen. I know WoG works with Linux, but whatever they did seems to have not been ported to the steam version. I'll have to try and get the working (donate) version and see if I can patch my steam with that which might not work because that's under Wine.

 

I installed and got Torchlight working under steam. However it has no sound at all. Funny, goo is sound only, torchlight is no sound. I also got Direct X 9 installed under Wine, but changing Torchlight to Open GL didn't see to make any difference.

When I close that game the screen res stays messed up and fuzzy, so I have to reboot.

 

Torchlight is OGRE3D, which tries very hard to avoid vendor specific methods/fixes, as such it runs on a very wide range of hardware and graphics should not be an issue if your driver is ok, I think it uses fmod for sound and linux sound is somewhat of a joke when it comes to APIs, drivers and all the rest. The GPL at its finest. I'd take a look at your video driver again tho, it sounds like it's doing bad things re: blurry etc. Chances are you'll need to bugger around with audio backends and whatever other filth they've jammed in to try make sound work everywhere.

 

Trying to get SS2 going now. Got a link from Tels at TTLG.

http://www.cedega.com/explore/

Cedega was only of any use years ago, these days wine is ahead of most of these "alternatives" in game support and quite a bit faster too.

[Baddcog]

I do things the hard way.

 

 

I had looked at USB bios settings before, and I know I've changed them in the past. But it said enabled so I thought it was ready to go, had to pull out the manual to figure out what I was missing.

 

It was booting by OS instead of Legacy. But of course I had to go buy a keyboard with a USB to PS2 adaptor first before I figured it out, gotta return it now

 

So I am booting to either OS fine now.

 

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I did DL Cedaga, but you gotta pay... So that's not going to happen.

 

My issue is trying to instal from CD. Say System Shock, I go in, double click the exe, but always get errors. Can't find very much info on line for installing these games. Not good enough with console to just do it.

 

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I do have the priority drivers for my ATI card and can set everything through the ATI control panel.

 

The fuzzyness is just the desktop with wrong resolution when I quit the game (Torchlight - I know it's Ogre, that's why it got installed - bought) but it looks great in game. Just no sound.

 

I've even got the drivers for my sound card going no prob, (X-Fi extreme gamer) which I was having a hell of a time with under kubuntu 8.04, it's actually the main reason I deleted that OS and gave up on Linux for awhile.

 

 

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Now that I can dual boot I'm going back to instal DR... See what Happens.