Posted: 9/10/2006 3:44:51 PM EDT
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I've been using SuSE linux 10.1 on my two computers for like 4 months on one and 2 weeks on another. I would love it IF AT LEAST ONE OF THEM WORKED EVEN 90%. Seriously. Let's take my desktop. The sound card works, but the breakout box only works to the tiniest extent. So I can plug my headphones into its port, but I can't adjust anything with the volume knob or use the CMSS (although I never really used that) or the like. And I can't play DVDs, and I can't play any of the movies I have (some regular mpeg/avi music videos). It will recognize a CD, it will recognize the tracks, it will start to play it, but there won't be any fucking sound. I can try ripping the CD, but no sound. The CDs work fine in my player. None of the included players have any support for WMAs, so a couple of albums in my collection are verboten unless I dig out my Zen. And then amaroK (the KDE audio player) crashes every hour or so And let's not forget the most important part: it won't fucking recognize its fucking internet connection. The onboard LAN worked for about 2 days. Then it stopped. So I tried everything, reinstalling drivers, yada yada, finally backed up my important files and reinstalled SuSE and it worked. For about 10 hours. So then, as my last hope, I try installing my old NIC card which worked perfectly under Windows, but won't even be fucking recognized under Linux. I installed the drivers with YaST, rebooted, nothing except it saying the connection is unplugged. Which it goddamn well isn't. And it's not like they make it easy to fix. No, they make it as convoluted as fucking possible. Supposedly you can play DVDs with the VLC media player. So I download the VLC .rpm for my computer and it turns out I need to install about a gajillion fucking libraries. Then each of those requires about a gajillion libraries before I can install them. Then each of those gajillion^2 libraries requires a gajillion libraries, and so ad fucking infinitum. Looking at some of these, most of these libraries look like they'd be pretty goddamn useful in any consumer machine. So why, in consumer releases like openSuSE and ubuntu, do they not just cram in all the libraries you're likely to need? I can understand it with enterprise releases because really, you're not going to need a deCSS and region codes and whatever if all it is is a CLI-only server or a hardware firewall. Or hell, why can't whoever you're getting the software from package the necessary libraries and just detect if you have them, install them if you need them, and not if you don't? How the fuck is it that, in Windows, I can install anything without being told oops, hey, you need this shit and guess what, we're not going to fucking package it with this program, so you'd better be really good at searching. It's even worse when I'm trying to get software to play a fucking DVD and the only computer I have with sound can't use the internet and the only computer I have that can access the internet can't use sound, so I have to transfer between them with a fucking thumbdrive, back and forth and back and forth. Then, there's my laptop. Built in wireless internet? Have it, won't fucking work. Won't even fucking turn on. Tried 3 different fixes, none of them worked. Sound? Won't fucking work. Tried every single fix I could find, none of them worked. Maybe it can play CDs and maybe it can't, I can't fucking tell because there's no fucking sound. The whole goddamn thing worked with XP, hell, the whole goddamn thing worked with Vista, but fuck if it works with Linux. And now I've backed up my important files and am trying to reinstall Windows on my desktop and guess what? It keeps freezing very early in the install process. Twice, after the reinstall process got about 2 screens in, it went to the Linux boot loader (you know, the one that says "SuSE 10.1 (normal)/Boot from Floppy/SuSE 10.1 (Failsafe mode) etc." Sonovabitch won't even let me reinfuckingstall Windows. I've had enough fucking problems with this fucking desktop under Windows, I didn't actually expect to have fucking more under an OS that is supposedly so shit-doesn't-stink superior. Fuck Linux. |
Try Mandriva. Previously known as Mandrake. I used Mandrake, and it found and configured everything I had, with VERY little input from me. It's a great distro for people like myself who hate MicroSquish, like Linux, but aren't at programmer level for "5killz" Good luck in whatever you wind up doing with your boxes... |
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You can thank hardware manufacturers for not releasing the information on their hardware to open source developers. What happens is someone has to reverse engineer it and write a driver which will typically have to be built into the kernal or loaded as a module. On lots of hardware this is too daunting and never gets achieved. Most stuff you can get working with good Linux knowledge and some patience searching forums and finding drivers. That's why mostly beginners use SuSE, Fedora, etc. They get 'most' stuff working automatically but the stuff that doesn't work is a pain to get working. Power users tend to migrate to other distributions because they are intended to be customized and expect a certain level of skill getting things to work. Media and entertainment are not the strong points of Linux when compared to other operating systems like Windows (though Linux is far ahead of many other free OS). In spite of that some people do run nice home theater boxes off of Linux but it's no simple task getting everything set up right. |
Honestly, at this point I'm thinking all-out format (probably Boot-n-Nuke) on the desktop and sell it for what I can get for it (it's 9 mos. old, and frankly I need the money more than I need 2 computers), and install my copy of XP on my laptop. If I can. If I had the money, I'd already be hauling my desktop (keeping, of course, the HDD, monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and having sold the video card, sound card, NIC card, and RAM) to the rent-a-gun range and shooting the sonovabitch up. Of course, I'd play nice and clean up the pieces, but it'd be wonderfulyl cathartic. |
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i've run fedora for a couple years now. up to core 5 now. i don't use linux for multimedia or gaming. I use it for internet. email, and bittorent, and then occasional im. i never got the sound to work, never got movies to play. it kinda let me down. OH well it works great for internet applications. which is exactly what i use it for heres a website for a bunch of different versions of linux link  edit. i also use linux for ssh. dah its very helpfull if in at work or home and i can send files to one computer or the other useing putty. |
That's not the fault of Linux or any other OS. That's the fault of the idiotic laws we have that make it illegal to play DVD's. Don't complain about Linux. Complain about the idiot lawmakers we have.z |
It's legal to play a DVD on your computer. Plenty of software does it, legally. WinDVD is the one I'm most comfortable with on Windows, I think VLC does it on Linux or Windows... |
You need to do more research. What you're posting could get someone in a lot of trouble. It is not legal to create a piece of software or hardware that can play a DVD without written permission of the publisher. It is illegal due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because such tools could be used to make an unauthorized copy of the data on the disk. Having such a tool is like constructive possession of certain metal parts and an AR-15.z |
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If you want a linux that does multimedia as well as *most* network hardware and works well on laptops, try Linspire. Some people want to dog Linspire because it isn't free (as in free beer), but they do charge for it because they pay the licensing fees so that you can do multimedia things, like play DVDs and such. It is legal with Linspire. I run it on my company laptop with a dual boot setup. I like it because one does not have to tinker with it. I need it to work when I need it. At home I run Suse and FC5, and yes there are many dependency issues with some apps. |
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Play MP3s: Use XMMS Play DVDs: Use Xine Play every video format known to man: Use MPlayer (uses win32 codecs) Play Windows games: Use Cedega Play Windows apps: Use Wine Play MS Office: Use CXOffice A couple of pics of my Linux desktop: Office-ness MPlayer-ness |
 excellent links 
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Wine is not that mature yet but Cedega works pretty good. Check out the forum and game database on transgaming.org/, most popular games like Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft works. I have Battlefield 2, Civilization III and IV, C&C Generals, Fallout and Ghost Recon currently installed. |
in fedora you can use yum to install various programs AND the kernel and other security updates. log in as su and then type yum update or for a program type yum install seamonkey or yum install firefox
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Allright, its like Portage for Gentoo. There you just type "emerge xine" and it downloads and installs all necessary things for it to run. Only drawback is that you need a decent connection or you will be downloading shit until the end of times
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Easy Ubuntu works very well for getting alot of things working in ubuntu such as dvd playback and what not. |
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You should buy a Mac. They work great out of the box. Also, I installed SuSE 10.1 on a machine yesterday/today and have it running Apache and have Samba properly configured. If I had more Windows machines, I'd configure it as a domain controller, but its kinda silly to have a domain for 1 Windows box. Got the newest nVIDIA driver installed (used YaST for that, a lot better than running scripts to compile a kernel module) and it's running like a champ. Having a goofy little problem with automount right now, but that's no sweat off my nuts - after all, I know how to mount a CD.  *Shrug* I didn't have any problems I couldn't figure out and fix. And the best part is, now that it's doing what I want it to do, it will continue to do that until something physically breaks. w00t. |
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I'm glad I only support Linux in an enterprise environment... When people call saying their whatever doesn't work in the X desktop environment, I get to say "sir, that's a server, we don't support ANYTHING in the X environment" Then I can sneak in something like... 'but I can help you edit your inittab to automatically boot into runlevel 3 if you'd like...' |
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The reason Linux can't legally play DVDs is this. You have to PAY royalties on the decryption keys and you get issued a unique one for your software/company. Then, the decryption code can not be open source or it would expose the keys. Funny that a few lines of perl can decrypt DVDs. I don't typically favor linux for GUIs. If I do then I use ubuntu/kubuntu. I run linux on everything down to my toaster. -Foxxz |
You need a fast system to do it, though. |
Remember: Linux is not an end user OS. It was designed by programmers for programmers... Further, DVD playback, to be *technically legal* requires a paid-for DVD decoder. Most Linux systems won't include this, and require you to go out on the net & get DVD decoding software (so that the publisher of the Linux set you got won't get sued)... Alot of the stuff 'not included' is not included due to legal issues, to keep the system freely downloadable... WMA is a proprietary format only supported under Windows. Ergo Windows Media Audio. Linux won;'t touch those, you've got to use MP3... And finally, by 'breakout box' I assume you mean some sort of drive-bay soundcard attachment... If it's not supported by the drivers (Linux hardware drivers are rarely written by device makers) all you'll have access to is the soundcard itself, nto the front-panel drive-bay device... |
+1 Been using FC4 for about 2 years now. I use it for 99% of everything I do. I have XP installed in VM ware so I can use MS Money (havent found anythign I like better yet) It has its few things that get a bit annoying, but overall, not wasting a few hours a week cleaning spyware and viruses has more than made up for it. I wish my SATA Raid (XCH6R) worked though, thats probably my biggest complaint. |
check into core 5. it might have the driver for it |
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I commiserate and I hear what you're saying frequently with new converts to unices. I'm a heavy duty unix guy. I've been using it for years, in many flavors and varieties for both work and for home stuff. (my personal current favorite is openbsd) That said, most of my desktop/user interface machines are Windows. The end user experience for non-experts on unix is just too damn painful. Nobody really has a truly user friendly version. Many great strides are being taken in that area, but it has not yet arrived at the same place windows is currently. |
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I use FC4 as my workstation at my job, but deep down I'm a UNIX guy as well. Free/Open BSD are my choices when it comes to anything that I need to administrate. My current project is a FreeBSD based media machine running MythTV for watching movies over the network, recording shows and file sharing. My experience with UNIX and LINUX systems has only really been recently significant as I'm finally in a position to develop my programming skills but I still admit I run windows for my home desktop. |
I was going to do the MythTV deal... got an external (usb) TV tuner... but now I need a dedicated Linux box to run it on. The software it came with (it's a Hauppague unit) is flaky... sometimes it will record 20-30 minutes, then it starts stuttering... or the files are corrupted... I almost installed XP Media Center (MSDN accounts are nice for getting free OSs!), but didn't want the overhead on my current box since I use it for gaming. I guess I'll end up buying a bare bones system to rig up a media box someday. |
Hm. I think MythTV only supports certain TV tuner cards. One problem I was running into was I couldn't get my ATI card's monitor outputs to work on my TV since ATI is real shitty about releasing any info or working drivers to the open source community so I just went and bought a cheap geforce with svid and dvi. I'm trying to pull up mythtv.org's documentation page but I think they're having DB issues at the moment. |
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Lemme just upgrade this to a generalized rant against my computers. So I've been repeatedly formatting and reinstalling, trying to get things to work. I get Windows reinstalled on my desktop and SuSE on my laptop. On my desktop, the internet is working fine, then BAM cuts out after a half an hour of use. Won't work. Well, I have a backup. I've installed my NIC card and the drivers. But oh, what's this? Why, it doesn't work! Why, the motherfucking adapter doesn't even show up in the list of hardware, despite the fact that it is securely installed, not physically damaged, and was working not a month ago when I removed it to put in my TV tuner card (which is now sitting neglected in my parts box, since I can't use both the NIC and the tuner). When I got it to vaguely start recognizing the card and loading the driver, the goddamn thing reset itself and went back to the way it was before I tried that. By now I'm pretty sure it's a hardware or firmware problem (I did flash my firmware once, the onboard ethernet wasn't working before and it didn't work after, and there's no new revisions), so I don't know what to do, since I can't afford a new motherboard. Now, the internet's working on my Linux-running laptop, but the sound still isn't. Despite the fact that I downloaded and installed, properly, the right drivers (it's a Realtek onboard sound). This after I tried reinstalling Linux on my desktop (the ethernet connector worked for about 20 minutes) and my copy of Windows on my laptop (nothing worked, couldn't get the drivers because I had no internet access, yada yada. Oh, wait, no, the sound worked, and that's it). And, when switching the ethernet cable, the little clasp-thing on the plug broke, so I have a cable that can fall out at the slightest movement. And I left my cable-fixy-thingy (you know, it crimps new connectors on) at home. And now I'm having to play hunt-the-driver because my Mobility Radeon X1600 needs proprietary drivers to even be recognized as anything but a generic, 800x600 POS and my 1280x800 resolution is going to waste, as are my eyes. I had the screen working before, but I had to be a dumbass and reinstall Linux to try and get the goddamn sound working. Which it didn't. So, after what will be another 5+ hours of wasted time fucking around with this thing, I just may end up at status quo ante-I-wasted-my-goddamn-time. Which will be with a desktop with a great fucking sound system that can't use the internet, and a laptop with an internet connection but which can't use sound or play a DVD. Maybe if I'm really lucky I can get one of them to work with the fucking printer. I'm really starting to hate technology. I'm just about ready to take these pieces of shit out onto the street and destroy them, but I have about $2300 sunk into the desktop, perhaps $1300 of which I can get back if I can sell it (more if I sell the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and printer, but I would want to keep those), and about $1300 in the laptop, plus countless hours in both. Edit: Oh, yeah, forgot to mention. The automatic updates do not work on my installation of Linux, even with the fix (apparently it was a known bug with the release of 10.1, but there is also a known fix which I have done). Also, I've been completely unable to download an .ISO of any other distro or of the Vista RC1 myself. It gets to about 80-90 percent and then encounters a fucking error and unrecoverably stops the download. This is after about 20 or so hours, because my goddamn internet connection went from the excellent 7-8mbps down at home to the pitiful 60-100kbps down in my dorm, a small percentage of which is used for downloading. I did get my family to download the Vista RC1, but none of them have a DVD burner or a large enough thumbdrive, and it costs too much to keep shipping the portable HDD back and forth, so I think I'll have to teach them how to use BitTorrent and just keep it as a private download. |
Usually scrounging and old MS-DOS disk and FDISK /MBR works. I have had problems in the past installing Windows after Linux overwrote the master boot record. |
| Well, right now I'm downloading the Ubuntu ISO (takes a lo-o-ong time... unfortunately, I have a slow connection right now), hopefully (since it says the only things that don't work are the built-in camera and the built-in phone modem, on the hardware compatibility section for my particular laptop), it should work a little better for me. |
+1. For personal productivity, I tried several distros for my HP Pavilion laptop. Ubuntu (Hoary) did not recognize sound card, video or wifi. Fedora did the same thing, plus I wasn't able to browse Windows formatted partitions. I finally tried Mandriva, and it recognized everything! including my wifi (you just have to supply the windows driver). It then automatically installs NDISwrapper and the Mandriva utility makes configuration a snap. However, I still prefer to use Slackware if I do a server or router. |