Linux on my system?

WyreTheWolf · Jan 30, 2003, 05:35 AM

I have decided to give Linux another try.

Three questions:

1) Is there anything in my system that would be incompatable with Linux:

MSI KT3 Ultra2 - R
1600+ AMD Athlon XP
512MB Corsair MXS memory
VisionTek Geforce4 Ti 4200se (128MB)
Philips Acoustic Edge
Realtek 10/100
Maxtor 80GB HDD (two partitions - Linux is going to have its own partition)
LiteON CD-Burner 24x12x48 (firmware for the 48x12x48)
LiteON DVD-ROM 16x40
Windows XP Pro is on the first partition

2) What is the absolute best version of Linux for a complete and utter newbie?

RedHat
Slackware
Mandrake

3) Last time I installed Linux it was Mandrake... I never could get the hang of it.

I guess too many years using Windows

ToshiroOC · Jan 30, 2003, 05:43 AM

Redhat, in my opinion, is ridiculously easy. I've only had problems getting my networking working, but thats because I messed around in root :\ and probably broke something that I shouldn't have... otherwise, it autodetected everything in my extensive computer, etc... and it only took me a couple of hours of self-teaching of linux to be able to recompile my kernel with ntfs-read support for my other drives... I can't imagine anything on there being incompatible, but if you need to reinstall windows any time soon, do it now and then leave the installation alone, since I think that installing windows again with Lilo in place is a bitch...

WyreTheWolf · Jan 30, 2003, 05:59 AM

I have been unable to find anything about Linux supporting the Philips line of cards

I guess I will be using Windows for a while longer...

ToshiroOC · Jan 30, 2003, 06:06 AM

Hmmm... not my department. I'm not big on audio to begin with, and I still haven't bothered with any sound stuffs in linux...

WyreTheWolf · Jan 30, 2003, 06:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ToshiroOC
Hmmm... not my department. I'm not big on audio to begin with, and I still haven't bothered with any sound stuffs in linux...

Well, there is a reason why I bought the Philips Acoustic Edge... almost unparralleled sound quality... may not be the best for gaming, but it is EXCELLENT for sound reproduction.

ToshiroOC · Jan 30, 2003, 06:35 AM

Ah, makes sense. I'm sure RIV@NVX or whatever his name is will drop on at some point and offer some sage advice

WyreTheWolf · Jan 30, 2003, 06:42 AM

There is a reason why I chose not to buy an Audigy, the frequency response is not flat. Not even close. Look at the Terratek... perfectly flat, look at the Philips... nearly perfect... The look at the Audigy... looks like the needle on a gieger counter durning a nueclear disaster...

ToshiroOC · Jan 30, 2003, 06:45 AM

Well, I just use me sound card for playing mp3's that are already low quality on cheap headphones and play games with lo-fidelity sound on the same, and even when I get nice speakers, my audio-stupid ear won't hear any difference except in volume

WyreTheWolf · Jan 30, 2003, 07:22 AM

A friend of mine came over to my house, he had a new CD that he wanted me to hear.

Now I have an old rack system sitting in the living room. I just dont use it anymore. As a matter of fact. It isnt even plugged in.

I drop it into my PC. (he has a strange look on his face :P)

He was amazed by the sound quality. He made the comment that my computer system sounds better than the audio system in his 2001 Acura. That is saying a lot. His audio system is a Nakamichi. Which is known the world round for high end audio.

That stands as a testement to the quality of the Acoustic Edge, and Altec Lansing.
Now I am not saying that Altec Lansing are the loudest, but the 251 series speakers do sound superb at normal volume levels. and for the money... they are really hard to beat.

When I am listening to music, and the wife is watching TV, I break out the headphones.
Sony MDR-G63 Titanium

Gots to love those things.

merry · Feb 7, 2003, 01:26 PM

First things first... I'm not a power user, I was just curious about linux. I had both mndrake and rh installed at different moments. From what I've heard, mandrake is the 'user friendly' version of rh, from my experience this stands. RH is not terribly dificult to instal either.

I guess it's when it comes to tweaking that Linux shows it's real potential. Linux and X11... At one point I had 320 MB RAM installed, and on an idle desktop, all RAM was full, and a little of the swap was in use. I wan't call it a resource hog... I just don't have the time to read all the docs to this thing. I did manage to find the config file that controlled the display resolutions, though, and succesfuly edited it :brag:

The command line interface is very powerful - so, again, you'll have to read quite a few man/info pages. I'm a lazy guy, I spent a whole afternoon trying to replicate 'dir /s'. The 'find' command does more than that - you do have to exclude some paths like /mnt/cdrom or /dev/, and than the name of the file you're trying to 'find' appears - in a list of exclusions. This is the point where I decided this is not for me.

I will still install some linux again, RH 7.3 I think...

*****

Thanks for the Philips Acoustic Edge tip - this looks like the soundcard I want to buy. One question, though: what could be the difference between retail and bulk? Besides the box and a powerdvd cd. The bulk is priced 2/3 of the retail version, in the same shop - I have enough boxes in the house, and powerdvd came also with my videocard, so...

WyreTheWolf · Feb 7, 2003, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by merry Thanks for the Philips Acoustic Edge tip - this looks like the soundcard I want to buy. One question, though: what could be the difference between retail and bulk? Besides the box and a powerdvd cd. The bulk is priced 2/3 of the retail version, in the same shop - I have enough boxes in the house, and powerdvd came also with my videocard, so... [/B]

That is the only difference between the two... as far as I know. Just make sure that you get both breakout cables.

Turns out that the Philips Acoustic Edge is not compatable with Linux... Although I am sure that they will keep looking at it.

The PAE is not really a gaming card although it does the job just fine... it is mostly a very inexpensive solution for music listeners that want the best quality that they can get for the least amount of money. The PAE uses a few more precent of the CPU, and it shows in gaming... making a few FPS difference.

Overall it is a good card, and it does come with a CD full of some nice software...

DO NOT INSTALL THE DRIVERS THAT COME ON THE CD... Philips updated the drivers and they are available here.

The new drivers are friggen excellent! CPU usage dropped quite a bit with these drivers... Good Luck!

UberLord · Feb 7, 2003, 07:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by merry

I will still install some linux again, RH 7.3 I think...

RH 8.2 will be out soon. RH 8.1 is simply the bees knees. Very easy to install and learn

And you prolly will never have to use the command prompt - unless installing ATI or nVidia drivers

ToshiroOC · Feb 7, 2003, 07:36 PM

If you ask me, you should learn the command prompt anyway - without doing so, it would be like trying to run Windows95 without DOS - possible, and for the most part ok, but if you have a problem you are screwed!

RIV@NVX · Feb 7, 2003, 08:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by WyreTheWolf
Well, there is a reason why I bought the Philips Acoustic Edge... almost unparralleled sound quality... may not be the best for gaming, but it is EXCELLENT for sound reproduction.

Toshiro, how did you guess?
I heard that Philips cards are good (very good actually), but there is one thing that I miss at all cards except Live!, Audigy and APS - kX drivers (free routing, peaks, summs etc.).

And, BTW, Audigy/Live! cards have Linux driver (opensource.creative.com).

merry · Feb 10, 2003, 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ToshiroOC
If you ask me, you should learn the command prompt anyway - without doing so, it would be like trying to run Windows95 without DOS - possible, and for the most part ok, but if you have a problem you are screwed!

A couple of years ago I was working some EE CAD, an old DOS sw that used some command line parameters (not all of them were documented). I wrote some batch files, mainly for my colleagues - 2k or more. At the time I envied linux for the much more choices of the command line - this was before Win95.

But now I mainly do nothing with my PC, that is when I finally bought my own, I also changed jobs, and also the little extra that used to come now and again stopped coming. I was still curious about this linux thing, only I have too little time to study just for the entertainment... And that X thing, well, it looks ugly and hard to manipulate. I tried to use xine (?, the movieplayer), but I couldn't load subtitles, and for some reason mplayer wouldn't run; CD burning didn't work on my first Mandrake installation - all these are easy to debug if you know the command line stuff. For that, you have A LOT of documentation, you only need to read it.

I suppose newer versions are easier to setup (I found I had an RH 8.0 5CD kit in the house), and I will definitely install one of them, but I don't expect much of it. Initially I was after the Linux From Scratch way, but I know for a fact I wan't reach that level, I simply don't have the time.

Good luck

PS Thanks for the PAE tips Wyre, I think I'll go for the bulk, I hope they don't have that retail/bulk differences like the original Radeon had.

radTube · Mar 11, 2003, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by merry
And that X thing, well, it looks ugly and hard to manipulate. I tried to use xine (?, the movieplayer), but I couldn't load subtitles, and for some reason mplayer wouldn't run; CD burning didn't work on my first Mandrake installation - all these are easy to debug if you know the command line stuff. For that, you have A LOT of documentation, you only need to read it.

X does look quite ugly on its own I quess... That's why there are great desktop environments like KDE to utilize all the great things that the XFree graphics server offers. My (Athlon XP optimized) KDE 3.1 desktop on my (Athlon XP optimized) Gentoo linux box looks so much prettier than my Windows XP. And the great thing about it is the way everything can be customized.

The thing about Mandrake is that it's a great distro (just like RH is) as long as you don't try to install something that doesn't come on the cd:s. I used it for months and lost a lot of hair trying to make the odd piece of software to work. It's true that you find Mandrake/RH RPM's for a lot of things you need to install but not even those work as often as they should. The Redhat Package Management system takes part of the blame in this. But as I said, it's great for someone who just needs a desktop replacement for Windows. Or an relatively easy to setup and affordable server for that matter. If on the other hand you can spare a few days to really learn Linux and want to have everything working as it should (and you have a good connection to the net), I suggest you take a look at Gentoo.

Jan 30, 2003, 05:35 AM	#1
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,110 Rep Power: 0	Linux on my system? I have decided to give Linux another try. Three questions: 1) Is there anything in my system that would be incompatable with Linux: MSI KT3 Ultra2 - R 1600+ AMD Athlon XP 512MB Corsair MXS memory VisionTek Geforce4 Ti 4200se (128MB) Philips Acoustic Edge Realtek 10/100 Maxtor 80GB HDD (two partitions - Linux is going to have its own partition) LiteON CD-Burner 24x12x48 (firmware for the 48x12x48) LiteON DVD-ROM 16x40 Windows XP Pro is on the first partition 2) What is the absolute best version of Linux for a complete and utter newbie? RedHat Slackware Mandrake 3) Last time I installed Linux it was Mandrake... I never could get the hang of it. I guess too many years using Windows

Jan 30, 2003, 05:43 AM	#2
ToshiroOC Unbiased. Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 4,812 Rep Power: 0	Redhat, in my opinion, is ridiculously easy. I've only had problems getting my networking working, but thats because I messed around in root :\ and probably broke something that I shouldn't have... otherwise, it autodetected everything in my extensive computer, etc... and it only took me a couple of hours of self-teaching of linux to be able to recompile my kernel with ntfs-read support for my other drives... I can't imagine anything on there being incompatible, but if you need to reinstall windows any time soon, do it now and then leave the installation alone, since I think that installing windows again with Lilo in place is a bitch... __________________ [img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator)

Jan 30, 2003, 06:06 AM	#4
ToshiroOC Unbiased. Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 4,812 Rep Power: 0	Hmmm... not my department. I'm not big on audio to begin with, and I still haven't bothered with any sound stuffs in linux... __________________ [img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator)

Jan 30, 2003, 06:35 AM	#6
ToshiroOC Unbiased. Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 4,812 Rep Power: 0	Ah, makes sense. I'm sure RIV@NVX or whatever his name is will drop on at some point and offer some sage advice __________________ [img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator)

Jan 30, 2003, 06:45 AM	#8
ToshiroOC Unbiased. Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 4,812 Rep Power: 0	Well, I just use me sound card for playing mp3's that are already low quality on cheap headphones and play games with lo-fidelity sound on the same, and even when I get nice speakers, my audio-stupid ear won't hear any difference except in volume __________________ [img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator)

Jan 30, 2003, 05:59 AM	Thread Starter #3
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,110 Rep Power: 0	I have been unable to find anything about Linux supporting the Philips line of cards I guess I will be using Windows for a while longer...

Jan 30, 2003, 06:42 AM	Thread Starter #7
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,110 Rep Power: 0	There is a reason why I chose not to buy an Audigy, the frequency response is not flat. Not even close. Look at the Terratek... perfectly flat, look at the Philips... nearly perfect... The look at the Audigy... looks like the needle on a gieger counter durning a nueclear disaster...

Jan 30, 2003, 07:22 AM	Thread Starter #9
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,110 Rep Power: 0	A friend of mine came over to my house, he had a new CD that he wanted me to hear. Now I have an old rack system sitting in the living room. I just dont use it anymore. As a matter of fact. It isnt even plugged in. I drop it into my PC. (he has a strange look on his face :P) He was amazed by the sound quality. He made the comment that my computer system sounds better than the audio system in his 2001 Acura. That is saying a lot. His audio system is a Nakamichi. Which is known the world round for high end audio. That stands as a testement to the quality of the Acoustic Edge, and Altec Lansing. Now I am not saying that Altec Lansing are the loudest, but the 251 series speakers do sound superb at normal volume levels. and for the money... they are really hard to beat. When I am listening to music, and the wife is watching TV, I break out the headphones. Sony MDR-G63 Titanium Gots to love those things.

Feb 7, 2003, 01:26 PM	#10
merry gargouille Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha Posts: 962 Rep Power: 0	First things first... I'm not a power user, I was just curious about linux. I had both mndrake and rh installed at different moments. From what I've heard, mandrake is the 'user friendly' version of rh, from my experience this stands. RH is not terribly dificult to instal either. I guess it's when it comes to tweaking that Linux shows it's real potential. Linux and X11... At one point I had 320 MB RAM installed, and on an idle desktop, all RAM was full, and a little of the swap was in use. I wan't call it a resource hog... I just don't have the time to read all the docs to this thing. I did manage to find the config file that controlled the display resolutions, though, and succesfuly edited it :brag: The command line interface is very powerful - so, again, you'll have to read quite a few man/info pages. I'm a lazy guy, I spent a whole afternoon trying to replicate 'dir /s'. The 'find' command does more than that - you do have to exclude some paths like /mnt/cdrom or /dev/, and than the name of the file you're trying to 'find' appears - in a list of exclusions. This is the point where I decided this is not for me. I will still install some linux again, RH 7.3 I think... ***** Thanks for the Philips Acoustic Edge tip - this looks like the soundcard I want to buy. One question, though: what could be the difference between retail and bulk? Besides the box and a powerdvd cd. The bulk is priced 2/3 of the retail version, in the same shop - I have enough boxes in the house, and powerdvd came also with my videocard, so... __________________ There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't. ~~Leonard Cohen

Feb 7, 2003, 07:36 PM	#13
ToshiroOC Unbiased. Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 4,812 Rep Power: 0	If you ask me, you should learn the command prompt anyway - without doing so, it would be like trying to run Windows95 without DOS - possible, and for the most part ok, but if you have a problem you are screwed! __________________ [img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator)