Linux Adventures
The first time I installed Linux was almost 10 years ago. I remember having to partition the disk with the Linux fdisk program, where you had to manually enter cylinder numbers and just hope your existing data wouldn’t be lost. Fortunately, it came with a 30 page installation guide, mainly describing how to use fdisk. In the end I managed to get Linux installed (text mode only, probably due to limited space), without losing my data.
After that, I often installed a new version of Linux, which I usually got from a computer magazine cover disk. The distribution I most often had was SUSE, and every time I installed it, the process was better than before. The last time I installed it (probably two years ago), everything went smoothly and almost all my hardware was automatically recognized without problems.
Other than playing around with Linux a bit, I never used it much. But now I’m using BlitzMax for creating games and it has a Linux version as well, so now I should be able to make a Linux version of my next game.
Lately, I kept hearing and reading about Ubuntu so I decided to try it. I downloaded an iso, burnt it to a cd and booted from it. The loader looked really nice and it just started up Ubuntu directly from the cd so you could try it right away. On the desktop, there was also an installation program. After trying it out for a while, I decided to install Ubuntu. All went well until the partitioning had to be set up. Scanning my existing disks took a very long time, and finally I got a list of /dev/hda, /dev/hdd and all the partitions inside of those, named hda1, hda2, hdd1, hdd2, etc. It didn’t show any volume labels, which made it kind of confusing. I selected the free space at the end of my second disk and tried to make a new partition there, but got the error message: Unusable free space. In the end I decided to install it over an old Linux installation that I had already forgotten about.
The remaining part of the installation went well and pretty fast, and soon I had Ubuntu running. The automatic updates went more smoothly than I’d ever seen before in Linux. But Ubuntu only has a limited set of packages that are supported. Things like FireFox and OpenOffice work great. But there is very little stuff for developers.
Unfortunately, BlitzMax programs wouldn’t run, because my nVidia GeForce MX420 graphics card hadn’t been set up properly. I found various websites about setting up the nVidia drivers in Ubuntu, and I figured it wasn’t going to be easy. I followed all the instructions and finally I had to restart X to start using the new drivers and all I got was a black screen. I’d hope to get the old one back after a while if I did nothing, but that didn’t happen. So I just pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del and started the recovery mode, where I could restore my xorg.conf file to get the old mode back. I tried instructions from other sites too, but after getting the same black screen six more times and restarting in recovery mode, I decided Ubuntu is probably not really ready yet.
Finally I downloaded openSUSE 10.2, installed it and that went very well. It even installed drivers for my graphics card so I can run BlitzMax programs!
March 11th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Sorry to hear you had so much trouble with Ubuntu. I’d have a number of suggestions for you but it sounds like you’ve got things working in SuSE now. As long as it works for you, that’s what really matters
…if you do ever get the urge to check out Ubuntu again my blog might be a help. I try to cover common issues for a better overall experience for everyone.
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com
April 1st, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Hoi Mike,
Je hebt een mooie site. Ik heb ook Linux (SUSE 10.0) en gebruik ‘t systeem voornamelijk om mijn websites bij te houden. Er kan natuurlijk veeel meer mee, maar als leek houd ik me maar een beetje op de vlakte. Ik heb maar 1 PC, dus ik kan niet teveel experimenteren!
July 6th, 2007 at 10:24 am
nVidia and ATi drivers are indeed an issue in ubuntuland and they make it worse by providing their own package for the drivers which usually doesn’t work. I solved all my problems by manually installing the drivers from the official sources (nVidia and ATi – yes i have cards from both companies). Beyond that though, i find Ubuntu to be the best Linux i’ve used
.
July 19th, 2007 at 11:28 am
it all depends on your hardware, i guess. some people are just unlucky with their software/hardware combo.
i’ve tried suse and most of the others, and ubuntu (7.04) was the most functional on my hardware (hp compaq nx9420 laptop). it asked for permission to install the commercial ati (x1600) graphics drivers installed the first time i booted up. updates are handled automatically (if you like), and because it’s a rolling distro like debian, it lets you upgrade to the next version (new every 6 months) without having to reformat and start from scratch, something suse can’t do. suse has a very nice centralized control panel. on ubuntu, the controls are spread out in several different places.
i prefer to start with a minimal ubuntu install (just the command line stuff), and only grab the stuff i like and. need (minimal kde etc). ubuntu has a pretty huge package repository (though not quite as large as debian), so not really sure what you’re talking about there..
March 30th, 2008 at 4:10 am
hi,
you had unfortunalty not known the “Envy” script for Debian-like distributions.
Almost Nvidia and Ati card’s drivers are well installed by Envy within 2 clicks…
(please see http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html)
although enjoy your Suse.