Archive for December, 2008

Even if you have ubuntu, and a propietary driver for your computer was automatically installed for you, its usually a good idea to install one yourself. The reason being that the drivers automatically dowloaded by ubuntu’s “hardware drivers” feature are oftentimes close, but not the perfect match for your video card. For example, i used to have to disable mip-maps on compiz with the driver that was automatically downloaded, otherwise i would see a white cube or window everytime i used compiz. To download the ATI driver you need to know what video card you have, once you know, head to the download site:

Drivers & Software

Be sure to choose your processor architecture. After you download the file it will have this at the end.

ati-driver-installer-8-12-x86.x86_64.run

I had never heard of a “.run” file, and after some research i learned that it was a shell script. So to run this program i would execute the following command as root in the terminal

sh ‘/home/francisco/Desktop/ati-driver-installer-8-12-x86.x86_64.run’

replace the part in quotes with the link to your download location

After you execute the command you should see this window

Choose to install the driver and press Continue. Then accept the license agreement.
\

Then choose automatic installation

Press Continue

Then Continue again

The driver installs, then follow the directions on the page

reboot

if after reboot the driver fails to install, run this from the terminal as root

aticonfig –initial -f

reboot

All right, there are several different ways to find and download a distro, if you can’t figure out how to download a file, then you probably are not going to be a good match with linux. However there is a common error that many new users do that can be avoided so you can save yourself from having to burn one or two corrupt cds.

After you have saved the cd to a file in your computer, you will need to find a cd burning program, if you are running a Windows, i recommend using ImgBurn

Install it, and follow the directions
Here’s the important part, burn it at the lowest or second to lowest setting. The higher the burn speed the higher the chance for error, and the wrong file being corrupt can cause the installation to fail or not work correctly.

If you choose to burn at a high speed, your installation may work but some files may become corrupt, so make sure you turn down the heat.

Ubuntu was one of the first distributions I ever tried, and it is the one that encouraged me the most to stay with Linux. Ubuntu is one of the most beginner friendly distros out there. It comes with a lot of packages pre-installed to make your life easier and help you out as you transition your life to Linux.
Ubuntu is IMO the best option for a new Linuxer, it comes with several drivers already pre-installed as well as being the most bug free distribution I have ever seen. My first wi-fi usb card, a wusb54gc, worked right out of the box with Ubuntu 8.04; however, it did not work with 7.10, the reason being that it was only added to the kernel in the 8.04 version. It is a very strong OS and contrary to the hype, not just a distro for noobs.

Ubuntu has a very easy to use installer, including a easy to user graphical partitioner walks you through the setup process and makes it easy for you to configure your installation. If you are not quite ready to commit and want to try it out before partitioning your hard drive you can either run it from a Live CD or from the Wubi.

As I already said, ubuntu now has better hardware detection than before but it’s not yet perfect, it configured my network perfectly and was able to detect a good propietary driver for my video card. Installng propietary drivers under Ubuntu is easy but not perfect. For example, when I told it to automatically install my ATI radeon 2400 HD PRO’s driver, it downloaded a usable driver all right, the driver it downloaded allowed me to use 3D graphics with Compiz, but the mipmaps was broken. I had to go to the ATI website and download the Linux installer for the exact driver for this video card, which was easy enough to do and corrected all problems I had with my video card.
Ubuntu 8.04 introduced Wubi, which allows Windows and Ubuntu to be installed in the same partition, (sacrificing some performace, of course). You also get a boot menu when your computer starts, to choose into which session to log into. Wubi is uninstallable with the Add/Remove program.

I created this website to attempt to record and share my opinions about GNU/Linux and serve as a help source for beginners

When i first installed my first linux distro I had to go through a large amount of trial and error, countless reinstalls, and a lot of frustation. This experience has been shared by most new users to Linux, regardless of distro or hardware. Because of this, many people easily become discouraged and return to Windows. I managed to stick fight through this and after doing some research was able to get everything running correctly, thanks to several helpful posts I found in forums from people who had similar experiences to mine. These forums were a lifesaver for me, in my opinion this is a much better way of getting support than the Windows way, where many times getting help means having to wait for a technician to become available, and then having to argue with them several hours or having to write a support ticket; or, sending an error report and then when no help comes starting to suspect that maybe the “Send Error Report” and “Don’t Send” buttons link to your trash bin.

In my opinion, Linux is much better than Windows. Windows doesn’t let me have the control i want over my computer and Linux does. I also share some anti-microsoft sentiments, although i do not hate Microsoft. I just find it ridiculous that the inner workings of your operating system would be kept secret (Only a few people in the world truly know how windows works, as it is propietary software), and that even though i spent alot of money to buy it, i only bought a license to use it, not own it, so this restricts my options with Windows a lot. I recognize that Windows is a great OS however. There is nothing wrong with running Windows instead of Linux or Mac, everyone should have their own opinions, and it is true that Linux has some ways to go before it is as beginner friendly as Windows.

I created this website to chronicle everything i have done with Linux, and in this way maybe someone out there can follow my steps as a guideline to where to start. This is NOT meant to be a definitive guide to linux however, there is no such a thing, Linux changes daily and although many distros’s are similar, they are not the same so some things that worked for me may not work for you (due to missing dependancies, processesor architectures, etc..), more than likely you may have to alter some parts. But this goes for every linux guide or blog out there.