It begins with a 'U' and ends with 'buntu'.

[moijk]

Further to anything I may have said previously, I'm really not enjoying Ubuntu 12.04!

Between poor driver support, inflexible settings and a truly irritating desktop, oh: I'm going to try out something different. Mint seems to have the big thumbs up in 2012 so that's where I'm likely headed.

In the meantime, I've reinstalled XP on a new hard drive in my old rig, so that I have some compatibility with my mahoosive collection of software that doesn't run under linux, and can run the latest WinUAE.

I'll let you know how I get on with the minteh flava :mrgreen:

I run ubuntu 12.04 on one of my desktops. never had any driver problem, no problems with settings and the desktop is fluent and nice. In fact, probably the best linux desktop i've had out of the box. (Still doesn't beat my AmiWM setup on my old pentium 100, but that took ages to perfect. custom compiled kernel, all the right settings on all the services etc)

And by all means, it is leaps and bounds better than the abomination called xp. But I've been running *nix systems since late 90s. Currently i run os x and linux.

So i think it is just a matter of understanding. while it might be inconvinent that not the right drivers is automatically set up, you can do everything in linux so that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[commodorejohn]

"If I'm not having a problem with my favorite OS, then I can't see how anybody else could be! Probably they just don't understand! Rock on, OS of my choice!"

 

[mike_cc]

good shout

good shout

I run ubuntu 12.04 on one of my desktops. never had any driver problem, no problems with settings and the desktop is fluent and nice. In fact, probably the best linux desktop i've had out of the box. (Still doesn't beat my AmiWM setup on my old pentium 100, but that took ages to perfect. custom compiled kernel, all the right settings on all the services etc)

And by all means, it is leaps and bounds better than the abomination called xp. But I've been running *nix systems since late 90s. Currently i run os x and linux.

So i think it is just a matter of understanding. while it might be inconvinent that not the right drivers is automatically set up, you can do everything in linux so that shouldn't be a problem.

That's interesting because I read lots of responses on this forum, to various threads, and I've never noticed a problem, with most people being fluent and nice. I think what you've done is ignored all the potential differences between our personalities, experience, knowledge, hardware and so on and made it about my failure to understand. Thanks for the heads up there, because the truth is, I do fail to understand how an OS at revision 12+ can get the basics so wrong. The biggest reason I installed Ubuntu was to escape being a slave to Gates. I wanted to learn more about the OS so that when I try to reinstall windows in the future and big brother Microsoft questions my honesty, I can flip them the bird and burn my windows disc. But half a lifetime of windows indoctrination and I'm spoilt. In Ubuntu, if a 'Monitors' window pops up, showing my monitor name, screen size, aspect ratio and resolution, all correctly, I have to question why there is a big black band all around the screen, that disappears when I change to a lower resolution of incorrect aspect ratio. Drivers? I hear you cry - find me a Radeon HD6850 proprietary driver that this OS doesn't refuse to install...and that fixes the problem.

I have no anti-Ubuntu or anti-Linux agenda, I'm just not blown away by a vertical 'rocket dock' type desktop interface that is inelegantly slow and buggy. You might be able to configure or fix that, but I'm one of millions of people who are used to an OS that simply works (it's the OS you called an abomination). I also can't see what the fuss was about Windows 7, perhaps that is just my understanding too!

Mint may have just as many issues with hardware installation as Ubuntu and in fairness, it may well have been too much to expect an open source OS to be up on very recent hardware (this is my 2012 rig after all). But it also comes with recommendations from people on Amibay and from Linux Format, as well as several other online sources.

So I'll give it a go, not because I'm dropping Ubuntu as soon as I encountered a problem, but because I was only ever trying Ubuntu out as the first of (potentially) several Linux distros, and because after several weeks of trying, I haven't been able to do something with it that takes about 10 seconds in XP.



---------- Post added at 11:47 ---------- Previous post was at 11:45 ----------

"If I'm not having a problem with my favorite OS, then I can't see how anybody else could be! Probably they just don't understand! Rock on, OS of my choice!"

Word!

 

[moijk]

Sorry, didn't mean to come forward as "since i don't have a problem, noone should". My tone wasn't acceptable, and my apologies for that. I could blame a tired body and a worn out head, but i should have managed to pick my words more carefully anyways.

It is just that every piece of hardware of the correct era have been subject to a XP driver. So of course everything works in XP.

But my experience with linux is that most works, although if your unlucky it means fiddling. I spent three years in univ and saw it a lot of times, friends tried linux for a short while, didn't get to set it up properly and it wasn't familiar - and they ended up with a sour taste. I should have helped everybody, but time didn't allow for that. I got around to find links on solutions, but to guide unfamiliar souls through the hardship of manual configuration files after they spent their life with gui-boxes wasn't done in the time i had. not that the possible solutions worked at all in all cases.

Missing or incomplete drivers isn't linuxes fault. it is the mfgs that produce that particular pieces of hardware. Pity, it undermines the great work done on the platform. But Linuxes worst enemy is itself. if they have managed to harness the energy put in by every distro maker, you could have something that beside driver and application support could really challenge the commercial parties.

Again, sorry i came out a bit hash. I'm not usually full of myself. What i was trying to say was "If there is a will, there is a way".

 

[morcar]

One of my main faults for a longtime was my 6850HD gfx card. Because getting it to run right was a right pain in the backside. Good thing is though from Kernel 3.2 there is support for it and a lot of newer hardware and Kernal 3.5 looks to really support a lot more newer hardware.

There were drivers for my card, but i used to get a lot of problems from them. Even the official drivers were a pain.

Now the card runs a dream and i cant fault.

As for the best Linux OS....Well for anyone coming from Windows and know nothing about Linux I can only pick one and that's Zorin OS. I was so impressed with this distro I donated £7 and got the Ultimate Edition.

Its one of the best distros around in my opinion as you can change the look using preset configs. It can look like Windows 7, XP or 2000 and can even look like MAC OS or just Gnome 2.

Its super smooth to use and its linked into the Ubuntu Software Center which is great if you cant stand looking about on the browser for something.

The community for Zorin Os are just awesome as they help you with anything that crops up and you get stuck on it. Brings me to another point with any Linux distro you have to digg and digg deep to find the info you need. I dont mean the first link in google either. Search, ask and maybe even beg and do it some more and you will get the answers you need.

I did it with some of the software and hardware I have and now it runs perfect.

I find Linux to be smoother and faster in doing most things like converting file formats (sound/video/text) and I also find that using Linux on the net is better too.

Anyways enough of me going on get Zorin OS its freaking awesome.

 

[AndyLandy]

Missing or incomplete drivers isn't linuxes fault. it is the mfgs that produce that particular pieces of hardware.

Well, yes and no. Manufacturers make their hardware and provide software for the OSes they're prepared to support. It's unsurprising that many only provide Windows drivers, since that's where the money is. Very few manufacturers write Linux-specific drivers. NVidia and ATi do, but the majority of other hardware drivers are written by hackers and enthusiasts.

It's less true today than it was ten years ago, but there's still some truth in the claim that if you want to run Linux, you buy hardware that works with the software.

 

[mike_cc]

Again, sorry i came out a bit hash. I'm not usually full of myself. What i was trying to say was "If there is a will, there is a way".

No worries bud, and I didn't need to jump down your throat like that, it was just my knee-jerk reaction after all the frustration! So yeah, I'm sorry for being a douche too!

If everyone had dropped Win3.1 back in the 90's because of how many problems it had, or the first release of 95, before it was patched, patched and re-patched, the world might be a different place.

I think that might be the crux of the issue though. MS make an OS, and it takes them, even with all their resources, years to do it. Then they leave that OS, mostly as is, for years. Any patches or updates, aren't so much to change anything, as to fix bugs. XP is an excellent example of this, love it or loathe it, that OS has been running on computers for 10 years now. It looks the same today, personalisation notwithstanding, as it did 10 years ago.

MS had the advantage (and pretty much still do) of a monopoly. So it's not like they were under extreme pressure because there were 500 other front running windows OS's out there pushing to take the lead. What are ubuntu and the other linux developers doing because of the pressure of competition? Ubuntu had an out of the box desktop that worked nicely, so why change it unless to gain an aesthetic leg up over the 'classic desktop' rivals? I say aesthetic because it's certainly not a functional improvement, out-of-the-box.

When it comes to tinkering, I would have thought that the 'out-of-the-box' experience should be tinker free, by release 12.04. If you disagree, that is fine, but it points to ubuntu not being a commercially viable piece of software at the home user level. Because believe me, I may not seem very puter savvy, but I'm streets ahead of about 3/4 of people I know.

I think these other posters are also correct, drivers are a huge part of the problem and that will only improve over time as nvidia, amd, and the rest acknowledge the growing use of Linux alongside windoze and mac.

Where does this leave dumbos like moi? Running Lubuntu on my downstairs computer but Netflix won't run on it AARRGH!! Apart from that, I've got a new recommendation to try in Zorin OS (thnx morcar), and the greedy idea that I need a Win7, XP, Ubuntu, Mint etc PC so I can have them all hahahahahahahaMUHAHAHAHA.

Sorry

 

[morcar]

ok so some people have problems with drivers what hardware cant you run ?

If you let people who use linux like me know maybe we can help.

 

[mike_cc]

ok so some people have problems with drivers what hardware cant you run ?

If you let people who use linux like me know maybe we can help.

I'm assuming that it's the grfx card, because the OS worked out that there was a proprietary driver, but it couldn't install the updates for the driver.

However, the option to run in 1920x1080 is there, it's just that when it displays on screen, the picture doesn't reach the edges. Almost every other screenmode fills the screen, but at a lower res. More annoyingly, the closest resolutions, that fill the screen, which I would otherwise happily make do with, are the wrong aspect ratio and pictures are the wrong shape as a result.

Ubuntu has also started returning error messages which dont say anything except that there is an error. When I click on 'report', it goes away about about a minute later tells me there is a problem making the report too!

Does Zorin make use of the ubuntu software centre?

 

[morcar]

ok so some people have problems with drivers what hardware cant you run ?

If you let people who use linux like me know maybe we can help.

I'm assuming that it's the grfx card, because the OS worked out that there was a proprietary driver, but it couldn't install the updates for the driver.

However, the option to run in 1920x1080 is there, it's just that when it displays on screen, the picture doesn't reach the edges. Almost every other screenmode fills the screen, but at a lower res. More annoyingly, the closest resolutions, that fill the screen, which I would otherwise happily make do with, are the wrong aspect ratio and pictures are the wrong shape as a result.

Ubuntu has also started returning error messages which dont say anything except that there is an error. When I click on 'report', it goes away about about a minute later tells me there is a problem making the report too!

Does Zorin make use of the ubuntu software centre?

So what card do you have ?

 

[mike_cc]

ok so some people have problems with drivers what hardware cant you run ?

If you let people who use linux like me know maybe we can help.

Does Zorin make use of the ubuntu software centre?

So what card do you have ?

Here's the card:

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/AMD_Series/EAH6850_DC2DIS1GD5/#overview

Sorry I just re-read and saw that you already mentioned the software centre!

 

[morcar]

so you also have a 6850 like me although mine is a powercolor.

For any Ubuntu distro like Zorin or even Ubuntu all i did was download the drivers from the amd website and unzip them into a folder (eg Downloads)

Then run Terminal and type the following including capitals

cd Downloads
dir

this will show you all the files that's in the folder (Downloads)

then type

sudo sh (name of driver)

it should ask you for your password so enter that in and let it alone.

Soon a window will pop up and you install it like a windows program.

Once done reset the computer and your driver will now be activated when your OS starts.

Any other questions you have plz let me know and i will see if i can sort it for you

 

[mike_cc]

Hi Morcar, that worked but it wants me to uninstall the older version which is already installed. I found the command:

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

Which doesn't work.

So I wondered if the folders might have changed and searched for fglrx-uninstall.sh but couldn't find it.

I'll keep investigating, but if you know what I should be doing, please let me know!

 

[mike_cc]

kept investigating...

kept investigating...

...but no luck with the advice on the ubuntu forums and 'Dash Home' keeps refusing to show up unless I reboot and then it pulls the same stunt a short while later.

Then there's this highly recommended Mint disc burning a hole on my desktop....

....and the Zorin distro that morcar recommended.

Time to shoobuntu. :double

 

[morcar]

sounds like you might have installed a driver that they showed you when you first installed it as you wouldnt get it otherwise.

You need to purge the driver first in the terminal which if memory serves me right is

You can copy and paste each line into the terminal to save time.

sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri fglrx-modaliases

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

 

[apa]

I saw a version of UAE for it, have any Linux users ran the premier Amiga emulator successfully and is it worth downloading?

I only run Ubuntu (and some other *nixes) at home. Good stuff.Up until quite recently the Amiga emulation was lagging behind WINUAE, but recently a very good WinUAE "port kind of" has arrived - FS-UAE.
http://fengestad.no/fs-uae/

A good site for finding softwarealternatives easy (if coming from Windows world) is
http://alternativeto.net/software/winuae/

 

[morcar]

I saw a version of UAE for it, have any Linux users ran the premier Amiga emulator successfully and is it worth downloading?

I only run Ubuntu (and some other *nixes) at home. Good stuff.Up until quite recently the Amiga emulation was lagging behind WINUAE, but recently a very good WinUAE "port kind of" has arrived - FS-UAE.
http://fengestad.no/fs-uae/

A good site for finding softwarealternatives easy (if coming from Windows world) is
http://alternativeto.net/software/winuae/

FS-UAE is very simple to configure through a notepad but read the guide first.

 

[mike_cc]

sounds like you might have installed a driver that they showed you when you first installed it as you wouldnt get it otherwise.

You need to purge the driver first in the terminal which if memory serves me right is

You can copy and paste each line into the terminal to save time.

sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri fglrx-modaliases

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

That's something I'll try on the reinstall. I have decided to install Linux as a second boot option, rather than as a stand alone OS.

When I reinstalled Win7 (reluctantly I can tell you), the same black band plagued the screen. However in this case, I was able to open the catalyst control centre and find an option to bring up the overscan setting - something that wasn't necessarily driver related, more app related (and bloody stupid, quite frankly).

Although yes, if I followed your instructions and properly purged the old driver (it showed as using Vesa??) then perhaps this option could be accessed under Linux also.