Desktops

[Asher]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
asher, you do realize that not everyone has the brand-spankin' new setup that you do, right?

i've yet to find a piece of modern hardware that linux doesn't work flawlessly with--and thus far, all the computers i've placed it on have ranged from a p2/266 to a p4/2.0.

not everyone has a sata raid setup.

Not talking about the SATA RAID -- I put in a regular IDE drive. That works.

What doesn't work is my video card -- at all. Max I can do is 1024x768 generic VESA. No thanks.

And for some reason, every distro I've tried so far results in kernel panics or random lockups. x86 OR AMD64.

[Q Classic]

well, except for samba, which is its own special case. stupid SMB/CIFS issues, too.

the lack real ati drivers is hardly the fault of 'linux'. ati, after about a year after others, has just released its closed-source drivers for XFree 3.3. nvidia had them soon after 3.3 came out, and released ones compatible with 2.6 within two weeks of 2.6's release.

[Q Classic]

(BTW, since I formatted my windows partition and re-installed it, I lost my dual boot. How can I restore it?)

well, what did you use to load linux, lilo or grub? and what did you install? gentoo, redhat/fedora, suse, lycoris, debian...

[Asher]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
well, except for samba, which is its own special case. stupid SMB/CIFS issues, too.

the lack real ati drivers is hardly the fault of 'linux'. ati, after about a year after others, has just released its closed-source drivers for XFree 3.3. nvidia had them soon after 3.3 came out, and released ones compatible with 2.6 within two weeks of 2.6's release.

I'm not saying it's the fault of "linux", but it's a terrible pain in the ass to use Linux when hardware just doesn't work in it.

ATI has a larger marketshare than Nvidia now, so this isn't a small thing.

[Q Classic]

and again, it's not the fault of linux. it's ati's fault for not releasing drivers for the platform. you think plenty of other linux users haven't been peeved at ati's rather slow release of any drivers for things not windows?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
well, what did you use to load linux, lilo or grub? and what did you install? gentoo, redhat/fedora, suse, lycoris, debian...

RedHat 9, with grub as the dual-boot software. I didn't touch my Linux partition, it merely seems Windows overruled the orders to start the dual boot.

[Q Classic]

other than a situation which i've created, i've never had a lockup or kernel panic in linux.

then again, my windows install is also rock-stable. it's not hard to do, even when you do use experimental/non-whql drivers.

[Q Classic]

when you install windows, it overwrites the mbr.

here's what you do. download a livecd, like gentoo, or whatever, or a floppy, like tomsrtbt, and then boot into linux.

this won't be your kernel, but the cd's.

then, at the command prompt, mount your linux drive type:


mount /dev/hdax /mnt/a_directory

chroot /mnt/a_directory /bin/bash
env-update


where x is the partition number (if the partition is second, with your windows being first, you'd be going into /dev/hda2) and a_directory is the name of the folder you're mounting it to. if you use the gentoo livecd, make it "gentoo". if it's something like knoppix or gnoppix (go into the cli first...), mount it to something else, if you want.

this first mounts your drive, then changes the root path from the cd to your linux partition.

then, since you have grub, type in
grub
to open up the grub program. it'll give you a blank screen with a basic prompt. type:

root (hdy,x)

setup (hdy)

quit
this will set up grub again on the mbr. y is the hard drive number minus 1: your first hd would be hd0.

if you had a boot partition, make sure that while in the first case you boot into the regular linux drive, mounted at / , for grub, you point it to the boot partition, mounted at /boot . if you didn't have a boot partition, ignore that last bit. i think red hat wants you to install a boot partition, that's what i recall anyway.

hopefully, your grub.conf file will not have been messed with. if it is, ask me again, but this should take care of you.

[Spiffor]

Thanks

I'm too tired to do this now, but I'll print your post

[Agathon]

See - I said that there were plenty of helpful folks on the net. And lo, one appears.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
and again, it's not the fault of linux. it's ati's fault for not releasing drivers for the platform. you think plenty of other linux users haven't been peeved at ati's rather slow release of any drivers for things not windows?

and again, I'm not saying it's the "fault" of Linux, but it's an undeniable pain in the ass and obvious obstruction to USING Linux. I don't care whose fault it is, all I know is it's a major problem.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
other than a situation which i've created, i've never had a lockup or kernel panic in linux.

Gentoo 2004.0 AMD64 kernel panics on the initial boot.
Mandrake and Fedora hard-lock during the install (AMD64 and x86).
Debian x86 hard-locks on initial boot.

[Agathon]

Maybe your computer sucks.

[Asher]

I think it has more to do with the quality of the installation and configuration software in Linux, combined with the craptastic quality of Linux drivers.

My computer is too sexy for the likes of Linux.

[Agathon]

Maybe Gentoo's inbuilt 1337 detection software finds you unworthy.