All "which distro should I choose?" queries here.

digit.sh

Journeyman
Long time for reply BTW..
Mint is sure to spoil Linux Experience & make you lazy enough
One may try out Open SUSE or Ubuntu

^ArchLinux is the best. No competition. Next is Debian. Crunchbang(Debian based) or Archbang(Archlinux based) for less capable hardware. OpenSuse is bloated and too complex, Ubuntu sucks big time(and so do distros derived from it).
 

Chaitanya

Cyborg Agent
^ArchLinux is the best. No competition. Next is Debian. Crunchbang(Debian based) or Archbang(Archlinux based) for less capable hardware. OpenSuse is bloated and too complex, Ubuntu sucks big time(and so do distros derived from it).

well get the linux kernel & edit yourself for best experience then...
 

chris

In the zone
Re: Which Linux to go for a beginner?

you can say it's advanced... go with ubuntu... if there are any issues , there's a big community which will help you out....

Ubuntu is better. I used Mint, i like it, it is more like Windows. But i feel like it is better to go with Ubuntu as they have bigger user base.

I was trying to move to Linux. So installed Ubuntu 13.04 64 bit, but Team Forress 2 have lot of lag. So i installed xubuntu (with apt), TF2 still won't run properly. At last i installed MATE (again with apt-get), that worked slightly better. Then i deleted everything installed Mint Maya with Cinnamon. It looks good, but again TF2 won't run properly. So i reinstalled Ubuntu as it is easy to get support.

Now my Tv Tuner AVerTV Volar GO won't work in Ubuntu. They used to support older version of ubuntu, i don't want to go Back to older ubuntu.

So i am back in Windows 7 now.

I got some windows application working almost find with Ubuntu + wine. But a quick google search found wine do not support USB deives, if not i could have installed TV Tuner card in wine.

Also my ATI graphics card have very bad performance (with xorg-edgers). Even minecraft lag too much. But TF2 improved a lot, it become playable.

Hope one day there will be more hardware support.. best thing that can do is allow installing windows drivers with some magic :)
 

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
Re: Which Linux to go for a beginner?

^ are you using AMD Catalyst with your AMD card?
 

chris

In the zone
Re: Which Linux to go for a beginner?

^ are you using AMD Catalyst with your AMD card?

Yes, default opensource driver won't even able to play minecraft in full screen, TF2, i get some error with open source driver, won't even start. I changed to fglrx and fglrx-updates, thet improved the graphics performance. I run glmark2 benchmark with each driver, opensource had some 1000, with fglrx-installer-13, i had some 1800 rating (for exact value, i need to boot to ubuntu, i am on Win 7 now). Then installed fglrx-installer-13, that made me play TF2 with less tag.

Previously i have installed AMD Catalist from source. But that won't made much difference. AMD recently made the catalist opensource, i think fglrx-installer-13 is open source driver.

When installing driver for AVerTV Volar Go, i get error

Code:
videobuf-dvb.h:1:20: fatal error: dvbdev.h: No such file or directory

I think this file is part for kernel, installed kernel-headers, but this file is not available.
 

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
^ fglrx is not open source. AMD has two drivers - Catalyst (fglrx) and the open source driver.

I always install fglrx by downloading from ZIP file AMD's website - *support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx (I guess you did the same):

Open terminal:
Code:
sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++6 dkms libqtgui4 wget execstack libelfg0 dh-modaliases linux-headers-generic xserver-xorg-core libgcc1 lib32gcc1 libc6-i386

Then..I'll extract the ZIP file and I'll get a .run file. Let's say amddriver.run

I'll go to the folder where it is there:

Code:
sudo ./amddriver.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/precise

Around 3 .deb packages will be created.

Then I'll install those:

Code:
sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

Then generate the xorg.conf file.

Code:
sudo aticonfig --initial
 

Chaitanya

Cyborg Agent
Any way of making myself more comfortable with Linux environment ??
( I mean things must look more like english.
for instance I tried installing mobile partner for my Huawei E303C & miserably failed to do so
Also a Display driver is must because by default Linux runs both IGP & discrete card(HP Pavilion G6-2005ax) generating a handsome amount of heat )

Pls don't suggest to use it already because i don't have a good internet conn. & installing apps the other way is pain in @$$..
 

siddharthx64

A Droid in a Tux
Any way of making myself more comfortable with Linux environment ??
( I mean things must look more like english.
for instance I tried installing mobile partner for my Huawei E303C & miserably failed to do so

Hardware compatibility issues are a dime a dozen, but that does not mean they have to be a giant pain in the a$$. All you need to do is look for others with the same problem in forums such as this one. After all,its highly unlikely that you are the first person to have a particular device and try to run it on Linux. Learn from the experiences of others. Believe me, things will start looking more like English as soon as you start looking more into it.

Also a Display driver is must because by default Linux runs both IGP & discrete card(HP Pavilion G6-2005ax) generating a handsome amount of heat )

I believe your problem is the fact that nVidia refused to release it's Optimus Technology drivers to Linux. This too, can be resolved by using a particularly clever piece of technology called Bumblebee. Linus's middle finger towards nVidia is so very justified now.

Pls don't suggest to use it already because i don't have a good internet conn. & installing apps the other way is pain in @$$..

Everyone starts at the beginning, and everyone finds it somewhat difficult to use. (Maybe because of being accustomed to Windows?). Nonetheless, learning Linux is really not Rocket Science, and you really can master it, if you remain interested. I would suggest things like Books, training videos (freely available on YouTube) and a million other sites where you can learn without having to spend a penny, but imho, the greatest teacher I ever had when learning to use GNU/Linux OSes was the experience of trying, falling and scraping my knee. A lot of frustration will come, but, along with it, a lot of elation too will follow, everytime you manage to figure it out. No Pain, No Gain seems to be too cliched here, but I'll say it anyway. . . . -> No amount of books and videos will ever come close to teaching you the ropes as experience itself can.
 

chris

In the zone
I believe your problem is the fact that nVidia refused to release it's Optimus Technology drivers to Linux. This too, can be resolved by using a particularly clever piece of technology called Bumblebee. Linus's middle finger towards nVidia is so very justified now.

I think this helped. Now it is said NVIDIA have better linux support.

SteamOS - this will make linux popular.

Now SteamOS/SteamBox ship with NVIDIA GPU. Soon there will be Intel and AMD GPU support.

[YOUTUBE]xVkas2E3NAg[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]TA-ILjyAMEI[/YOUTUBE]
 

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
Actually StreamOS is nothing but Stream on Debian. So, installing StreamOS just for the sake of the name makes no sense.
 

Chetan1991

Youngling
Which is the best and stable distro for web development and design, and perhaps also android development? I recently installed Mint 16 but it had problems out of box (display shutting down on dimming screen, no support for wlan card.)
 

chris

In the zone
Which is the best and stable distro for web development and design, and perhaps also android development? I recently installed Mint 16 but it had problems out of box (display shutting down on dimming screen, no support for wlan card.)

Try ubuntu. For WLAN, can you post result of

rfkill list
lshw -C network

I got it workong before, this is because the wlan card driver is listed in modprobe blacklist.
 

Shah

Cyborg Agent
Which distro has the fastest boot-time and light-weight? Main usage will be reading PDF files, watching videos (both online streaming and offline videos) and some IM chatting. Important criteria is that It should start up within a few seconds.
 

kamikaz

Ambassador of Buzz
[MENTION=94364]chris[/MENTION] I think open source drivers are more powerful for your device ,you will probably have to try it ,if you are used Ubuntu based distros try oibaf PPA its got the the latest mesa ,and also get hold of the latest kernel anything above 3.13 is good as they have improved performance for ati cards ,you can also try an arch based distro like manjaro xfce ,which is quite stable and also has latest drivers (not as new as arch ,it lags behind it by a bit ) ,perhaps you should google a bit more to get the optimum option ! If you want to go the proprietary way get the latest beta from AMD

In fact I would like everyone here to try manjaro Linux ,for an arch based distro ,its quite stable ,in fact I'm using it on my lap now and using MPV player I'm getting 1080 playback quite smooth (including hi10 1080p anime) and during browsing pages loads quite fast too (this could just be an illusion,still)
 

chris

In the zone
[MENTION=94364]chris[/MENTION] I think open source drivers are more powerful for your device ,you will probably have to try it ,if you are used Ubuntu based distros try oibaf PPA its got the the latest mesa ,and also get hold of the latest kernel anything above 3.13 is good as they have improved performance for ati cards ,you can also try an arch based distro like manjaro xfce ,which is quite stable and also has latest drivers (not as new as arch ,it lags behind it by a bit ) ,perhaps you should google a bit more to get the optimum option ! If you want to go the proprietary way get the latest beta from AMD

In fact I would like everyone here to try manjaro Linux ,for an arch based distro ,its quite stable ,in fact I'm using it on my lap now and using MPV player I'm getting 1080 playback quite smooth (including hi10 1080p anime) and during browsing pages loads quite fast too (this could just be an illusion,still)

I changed from catalyst to open source. Now it performs much better than before. I can play games like TF2, Civ 5 with out much problem. I read about oibaf PPA, but for now i will stay with stable drivers as i read some times it can get unstable as it is bleeding edge. I do plan to get a NVIDIA card soon, may be after GTX 800 released or after Borderlands release on October 14, that is said to be available in Linux too.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for other Linux, i normally hate wasting space at top of application window (title bar + menu bar). Ubuntu is the only dstro that save that space.

*i.imgur.com/hqdQjisl.png

No space waste.. i hate seeing applications waste top space when i was using Mint 17 chinnamon few months ago (that failed to switch me from windows). After using Ubuntu terminal, i start hating windows command prompt, that can't even re-size properly :)
 
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