the one drawback to linux

is it seems to have bad hardware suport.only verion i saw that gave me suport for 3d with my ati 9800 had other issues and ya have to hav a phd to install drivers for this ati card on linux and the aiw features i dont even think are being made for linux i musta tryied 5 verions this week dling suse 10 now have mandriva 2006 on here now tryied the new fedora it just crashed in the insall .blah frustrated to say the least this card is preety old

Raggie, you are doing it wrong.

You should always start with checking for compatibility before you buy the card. It does not matter if it's for Win98, XP, Linux, Solaris or Mac OS. You would not believe how many "computer problems" have been brought to me by friends and family where the only problem was the program or hardware is not compatible with the OS.

Instead of downloading 5 versions of Linux, you should find a driver that is reported to work (if it exists) and then check to see which kernel+compiler version it was tested with.

It never takes a PHD to install a driver in linux. All it takes is starting with the right configuration and following their instructions to the letter. It helps to print out the instructions and check off each step as it is completed.


Daniel

o i dont mind dling em just takes time and i like to have em but i realy should mark what they are lol i found a gentoo thats gui install the other day but its still hard to install..i tryied to enter distro that works with a 9800 on google but had no luck .i thought i installed the driver on mandriva but when i run glxgers it was only like 300 fps was wierd knopix games dvd had awesume speed for 3d but after the install my interent conection didnt work im thinking i needed to set up my nic but i didnt see the option for dhcp

Raggie, ATI has very poor support for Linux. Open source drivers in the kernel written by Linux developers cannot utilize modern 3D cards very well, especially since cards are constantly changing and the drivers are usually reverse-engineered or written based on what little specs the manufacturers give. ATI, while they *have* released drivers for Linux, is not really concerned with Linux users to give them really capable drivers. If you want to use Linux with any graphics card, I recommend Nvidia because Nvidia's drivers under Linux are as good, if not better, than their Windows counterparts.

As for the network connection, try running 'dhcpcd' as root -- this should force the computer to use DHCP.

Thankfully ATI's drivers have improved over the past year or two. They're still far from ideal, but getting closer!

[edit] Generally speaking hardware support can be excellent. Exceptions to that are wireless drivers and anything extremely new :-/
My roommate has an old model compact flash reader and an older parallel flatbed scanner. Both will not work under XP, drivers are nowhere to be found. Incidentally they both run fine under linux [/edit]

also the keyboard isnt the same like the time ya hold down the keys is shorter so it adds extra letters if ya dont move fingers fast .i tryied the drivers at the ati site it has like 4 ones to download i tryied em all sadly

There ought to be a way to adjust the key press time. If I ever knew how to do it, I've forgotten, but someone will know.

In my experience, all Linux distros use the same video drivers, at least that was the case with my now retired Matrox card. I had to install 5 Linuxes to figure that out though. At least it was a learning experience. Most of these installs came up running X-windows with no option to disable it, and no option to set the video parameters. In other words, they were useless.

I finally came across one that would boot up without x-windows and I was able to adjust the settings. The driver for that card would only work without crashing if the screen resolution was 800x600 or less. But I found I could use a generic VESA driver and get higher resolution. Doing so eliminated the dual monitor capability but I didn't need that when running Linux.

I read in one of the UK Linux magazines that ATI is pulling back it's support because of their contract with Xbox 360. The Developers have lost the ATI repository of data as a result.

If you think video cards are a pain wait until you try to spec Linux happy Wireless cards.

useing knopix now again and so as i download something else ill get rid a knopix some reason there dl program dont work its apt which i thought was debaen

To adjust key press time... a quick search for "keyboard repeat rate" on Gentoo Forums reveals all. In most cases the advice offered on their forums will apply to other distros.
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-98979.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-370288.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-328706.html

You should also be able to adjust keyboard repeat with KDE and XFCE's settings panels, and possibly GNOME's as well.

Most wireless card driver solutions now involve a great thing called ndiswrapper. Although it means bootable LiveCDs are not always "no configuration necessary," (for now) it means you can take Windows drivers for a wireless card and use it on Linux.

I am not sure, but apt may not work on a bootable LiveCD Linux.

lol now im useing puppy again .its always turn out to be my fave but man i have to get some 3d it wont even run the thing i like where penquins walk around my screen lol i love them guys

I made the exceptionally dumb mistake of changing a mobo on a Linux machine. My, did it get angry at me when it tried to boot and the kernel didn't see the chipset that it expected! I'll never make that mistake again.

Is getting the wireless to work on a laptop with Linux really such a hard thing? I tried Knoppix and I didn't have to do anything for it to work. I just found the network and logged in and I was on the internet in no time.

offroadcmpr said:

Is getting the wireless to work on a laptop with Linux really such a hard thing? I tried Knoppix and I didn't have to do anything for it to work. I just found the network and logged in and I was on the internet in no time.

Click to expand...

There is little to no support for 802.11g cards. Common chipsets are supported under Linux, however.

carrot said:

There is little to no support for 802.11g cards. Common chipsets are supported under Linux, however.

Click to expand...

This is disappointing and a little surprising. I've always thought that the linux community was at the cutting edge of WiFi developments. I've never tried to run a wireless card on a linux-based laptop, and it looks like I won't be attempting this for awhile.

Anyone tried booting a laptop from a "live" CD like Knoppix? I've only tried it on desktop machines, and so far it's done a halfway-decent job of detecting the usual internal devices.

Slax runs well on a Dell laptop. I think it was an Inspiron 8200, or something like that. I don't know about networking though. I just ran some graphic games to diagnose a memory problem. Standalone memory diagnostic programs couldn't find the problem, but Slax did.

PhotonWrangler said:

This is disappointing and a little surprising. I've always thought that the linux community was at the cutting edge of WiFi developments. I've never tried to run a wireless card on a linux-based laptop, and it looks like I won't be attempting this for awhile.

Click to expand...

AFAIK, wireless card driver development has largely slowed down with the introduction of ndiswrapper, which lets you use Windows drivers for your WiFi cards, and sometimes other drivers as well. I was not too happy about native drivers not being developed as much to be integrated in the Linux kernel, as it would make LiveCDs less useful, but apparently ndiswrapper is very good. I have not tried it, because I quit using Linux on my laptop before ndiswrapper gained visibility and stability (got a Powerbook; pretty happy with it). Now Linux is reserved for my desktop which is wired and I use it as an application server and file storage.

Alright, more information: I just asked some other people... and they say chipsets that do work natively are Intel Pro Wireless 2200 (Centrino laptops), Atheros, Prism54, and ZD1211, as well as a few others. Broadcom support is under heavy development. So... since my last experience with Linux and 802.11g, the driver situation has improved quite a bit... but for many other chipsets, it's ndiswrapper and prayer. Sorry for the misinformation.

The very best LiveCDs for autodetection would have to be Knoppix, Slax, and Mepis. Mepis was the only one of the three to recognize and run my laptop's sound card, yet none of them were able to detect the 1280x768 resolution of the LCD, forcing the LCD to go into 'stretched mode.' Knoppix has run perfectly with the exception of sound cards on every machine I've tried, as well as Slax. The Ubuntu "Hoary Hedgehog" LiveCD apparently has problems recognizing USB keyboards, and the PPC version could not recognize my Powerbook's trackpad (wtf?).

Personally, as far as LiveCDs go, I use Damn Small Linux because it is very small (only 50MB), the first Linux I enjoyed using (disclaimer: YMMV; I liked it because of its limited user-friendliness, requiring me to learn my way through Linux... but it has enough GUI that my mom was able to use it just fine...) and because it requires so little processing power, it is almost guaranteed to work on any computer -- as long as it can boot from CDs.

Wow! After a 10 year absence I waqs just thinking about cranking my unix up again. Then you drop in the comment about DSL. How good is that! I just love the idea of a silent little server wirring away under the desk supporting my ADSL, printers network etc.

Thanks for the inspiration.

Peter

pmath said:

Wow! After a 10 year absence I waqs just thinking about cranking my unix up again. Then you drop in the comment about DSL. How good is that! I just love the idea of a silent little server wirring away under the desk supporting my ADSL, printers network etc.

Click to expand...

More inspiration. 100% silent, solid-state computer for under $300.

well some distros had like 54 fps got it up to 300 fps .well after many many many hours and frustraion got my drivers instled and at 5200fps .lol now i can play games like tux racer lol