Leap to Linux

[The JoJo]

Ok, I finally got enough of Win2k, and installed RedHat 7.2 on my computer. I have dualboot, so that I can occasionally play and watch dvd-movies in Windows.

The dvd-movies part is because I haven't installed the drivers for the Realmagic Hollywood+ card, and because I don't yet know if the optical output on my SB Live Optical IO add-on card works. Anyone?
I can watch dvd-movies on linux, using ogle and xine.
If I'll get the optical stuff working, I might rip out the H+ card and only use the nvtv program to get dual-view , using the tv-out of my geforce. If anyone has any comments on these issus please post!

So far I have been very pleased with the system. Except for the games I haven't booted into Win2k now in a long time.

I must say that KDE does feel a bit bloated and slow to me, maybe I'll try a newer version that I'll compile for my computer. I think it was Handruin that said that he got an enormous speed-boost by doing that?

Now to download a new kernel...see ya!

 

[The JoJo]

Here's my system (I'm sure something is missing....hmmm..).

 

[Mercutio]

I mostly use Linux for work-sorts of things, so even though I'm very much an A/V enthusiast, I have to say I don't know.

A little research tells me that there are tools that do ac3 out through SPDIF on various sound cards (everyone seems to have a Live!), and that there are patches in CVS for getting AC3 out on your HW+ without setting up the redirection yourself. Finally, some cards, like the Live! do work in digital mode. You can use your add-on board with TOSlink or coax SPDIF, but you may have to do some tweaking.

So, yes, Linux won't let you down if DVD watching is something you want to do.

 

[Tannin]

The only problem I have with Linux relates the area where Apple have always been the best: the visual side. Guess I should tinker till I get it right, but even the most recent disto I have tried (Mandrake 8.1) just can't cut it when it comes to on-screen usability.

Hey, I don't mind ugly - I'm an OS/2 user from way back, I rather like ugly - but the font weirdness makes some apps quite unusable. In particular, web browsers. Sites that do anything fancy with fonts are all but unreadable. An example was Storage Review in Jive days - I don't know if it's still the same with phpBB, as my Linux box went back into the parts bin a month or two ago.

I'll try again in a little while, the next time there is another revision and I have a little spare time. But for now. I'm afraid, I'd rather use Windows 3.1 for web access.

What is it with Linux users? Are they all blind or is there something you have to do that I have not figured out?

 

[Mercutio]

What is it with Linux users? Are they all blind or is there something you have to do that I have not figured out?

A bit of both, really.

You'd think making the out-of-the-box desktop as nice as possible would be a high priority, but that just hasn't been the case thusfar. You really *can* get a nice setup. It can take a lot of tweaking to get things right, and there's about a dozen places where things can be adjusted.

 

[The JoJo]

Thanks for the info Mercutio, I'll start digging into the ac3 stuff right away.

Watching movies , .mpg and DVD, are part of what I use my computer for. I have a Toslink to my amplifier and a cable to the tv in my livingroom.It has worked very well for me for many years now. The Realmagic remote has also helped.

Tannin, what do you mean by unreadable? I've been using mozilla now for a few weeks, and so far haven't come upon any problems(visual).

All in all I'm pretty content with Linux for my personal use, although I have experienced some weird problems, some that might have been related to the Athlon "bug".

 

[The JoJo]

Mercutio, could I ask you to post links to the places that your quick research took you to?
Just to make sure I haven't overlooked anything important...

Thanks1

 

[Mercutio]

Tannin's probably referring to the mess associated with xfree86's fonts. You can run a truetype font engine, but not every program is TTF aware, which can make the look and feel of the GUI uneven in places. That, and the included fonts aren't as nice as those in Windows.

At least under Redhat, the 72dpi fonts are installed and used by default. For high-res use (1024x768 and up), the 96dpi fonts look a lot better.

Just changing the default display font can make a big difference sometimes.

Links: Basically, I went to google.com and searched for "linux SPDIF live digital" or somesuch, and then "linux DVD AC3 Dxr3" for the rest. I probably looked at a half-dozen pages.

 

[The JoJo]

THanks M.

Pretty much the same that I have done when searching for info on the sblive the last days, the google search I mean.

Hmm, I haven't tried different fonts yet, thanks for the info!




My radio was just stolen from my car, damm that makes me mad!

 

[Tannin]

Jo Jo, I don't know what you did that I didn't do, or maybe it's a Mandrake-specific thing, but there is no way that you would look at the on-screen display of (e.g.,) Netscape looking at SR in Jive days and be able to use it for more than 5 minutes. I'm not talking ugly, I'm talking all but unreadable.

Mozilla was just as bad, Konqerer too, and though some sites were OK, many others were terrible.

I went with the standard out of the box install of Maddrake 8.0, with a TNT and a 19 inch monitor at 1024 x 768. I tried various reinstalls, lots of uninformed hacks and fiddles, posted about it on SR, got some hints and tips, eventually got hold of 8.1, had the same problems, gave up.

Figure I'll wait for 8.2 or 8.5 or maybe try a different disto next.

 

[The JoJo]

Sorry to hear about your troubles with linux Tannin. It can be so frustrating not getting something to work!

I'm using normal RedHat 7.2 and KDE, maybe it's just me, but at the moment I can't complain about the looks or the fonts....

You don't happen to have a picture of the problem?

 

[Tannin]

No I don't, Jo Jo. But it is an easy enough task to do a Mandrake install on a spare machine - one that is built ready for a customer, say, but hasn't yet had the Windows install. (I can't believe how easy Mandrake is to install. Makes installing Win 98 seem arcane and difficult.) I'll do that, take a screen shot, and post the result.

(Of course, that means I'll have to figure out how to take a screen shot in Linux - shouldn't be too hard I guess - though sometimes it's the most simple things that take the longest to figure out!)

 

[The JoJo]

OK, installed updated emu10k1 drivers for my SBLive, now the Hollydoow+ is next. Enabled AC3passthrough, so I should be able to get some sound to my amplifier when I install the H+.

Sorry it's been taking so long (don't know if anyone is interested in my story here ), but I've had fever and flu, and haven't had too much strenght to play around with the computer...

I'm not quite sure yet, but I think my computer is more stable with the mem=nopentium and agp2x (instead of 4x) enabled. Theese because of the Athlon "bug". Had a few freezes before I enabled these options.
Besides that I have had a few instances of konqueror dying. Maybe I should try out Nautilus...?

Just installed a 80GB Samsung IDE (forgive me... I needed lot's of space) as ext2. Still seems like a good, silent, cool drive to me. I had the v30 60GB a while ago...
Now I'm thinking of converting my other drives from vfat to ext2/ext3 or perhaps ReiserFS.

The OpenOffice program suite seems quite nice to me, so far it has opened everything needed. I must admit that those files have not been very complex though...

More later...

Tannin, please do the Mandrake install, if you have the time and energy for it! I did install the latest Mandrake last week, but didn't go into X...

 

[Tannin]

Soon as I get a chance, Jo Jo. In the meantime, I can tell you that I haven't tried the 80GB Samsung yet, but that if their previous models are anything to go by, it will be decently fast - nothing special but perfectly OK - very quiet, and utterly reliable. We have now sold many hundreds of Samsung drives, somewhere between three and eight a week for the last couple of years, and we have still had zero in-service failures and one DOA. That is a record that just can't be beat.

 

[The JoJo]

Ok, I tried out the up2date program that comes with redhat. It requires that you register with redhat.com.
The program works like windows update, or like apt-get in debian(haven't used it though). It goes through the rpm files you have installed on your computer, and suggests updates if redhat has any.
I updates my 7.2 installation with everything redhat had, which was about 300MB of programs.

It worked like a charm. First it downloaded everything chosen, and then installed everything. I even got a new kernel with it, and it configured lilo (boot manager) for me. Not bad.( I haven't compiled a new kernel yet, I've been content enough with stock kernel).

A very easy way to update! I've only tried it once, but I almost feel confident enough to recommend it!
Next up for me is the Hollywood+ installation, wish me luck!

 

[Adcadet]

I'm curious to see how the system feels after compiling the kernel and KDE stuff for your specific system. I've noticed that KDE2 seems slow, but I assumed it was because I was running on a P2-266 and Celeron 366 laptop - my fear is that it's KDE itself. Hopefully KDE3 will include a speed boost - but I doubt it.

 

[Santilli]

JoJo; Have you run HDparm?

Sluggish Linux has usually meant the disks are running in the =of pio mode.

gs

 

[The JoJo]

Santilli, yes that's probably right, but not in this case. If you check out my sig, you'll see why. The Seagate is my boot drive.

Adcadet, I'll try that this weekend. Hopefully it'll give me a noticeable speed boost, because at the moment I'm not too happy with the "snappiness" of KDE.

Still not installed the H+, where to get the time.....

 

[Santilli]

ss

JoJO:
Have you setup HDParm?

gs

 

[The JoJo]

Santilli, no.
What do I need to do with hdparm to get the best performance?
I have done "hdparm -tT device" and gotten results that I would expect from the drives, and the Samsung(ide) drive has DMA enabled. I haven't done anything else with hdparm so any information is welcome!!

I (have) thought that hdparm is only to tweak ide drives? Am I wrong?

All tweaks you people can come up with are welcome!

 

[Santilli]

Ask Mercutio and company

About what the settings should be for your different drives, with HDparm.

I had them laying around, but can't remember where.
gs

 

[The JoJo]

Damm, when going to www.abit.com.tw or www.abit.nl, Mozilla will not show everything correctly...
Things like "download" do appear, so I'm back to using Netscape.

And now I noticed that in netscape I can't use up/down/left/rigth arrow buttons when editing this text, hmmm.....

 

[Mercutio]

I think the problem on Abit's site is one of three things: Either they have javascript or Flash doing a whole bunch of work (there's no flash available for Mozilla) or else there's a problem related to fonts and character display (unlikely). Javascript seems a good candidate.

For the other... Keyboard mapping problem, maybe. I have no idea what a Finnish keyboard looks like... You might want to see whether you can accomplish anything with xmodmap.

 

[LiamC]

Linux Fonts

Hey Tannin,

guess I'm not the only one to run into the font problem with Mandrake (8.0). Opera is a little easier but I agree that Nutscrape really looks bad...

Anybody, do you just randomly choose fonts with the browser or do you have to install the 96dpi fonts in K?? Thanks for the clue Mercutio.

BTW 1024x768x32 with KDE

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

For nice font display under Mozilla on Linux, you really need a recent Mozilla (probably 0.9.6 or newer, I'm not totally sure -- 0.9.7 and 0.9.8 definitely do the trick though), as well as XFree86 4.1.0 or later (Mandrake 8.1 or RH 7.2 -- XFree86 4.0.x from Mandrake 8.0 or RH 7.0/7.1 is too old; RH has XFree86 update packages for RH 7.1 but I haven't tried those yet). There may be other stuff needed; if so, Mandrake 8.1 definitely has whatever else is needed.

In brief, the formula is Mandrake 8.1 + newer Mozilla. Mandrake 8.1 alone, or the newer Mozilla alone, is insufficient. You can probably use RH 7.2 (or maybe 7.1 with all Red Hat updates applied) instead of Mandrake 8.1, but I can't say that for sure yet. If RH 7.2 works, I would expect SuSE 7.3 (and possibly 7.2? definitely not 7.1 though) to work as well. Also, I would expect the Mandrake 8.2 beta to have everything needed out-of-the-box, but I haven't tested that yet either.

 

[LiamC]

Thanks Barry

 

[Tannin]

Thanks Barry. I have a Mandrake 8.1 already, so I just have to find a spare box to install it on and grab the Mozilla. (Though I splurged and bought an Opera licence for the 'nix version just the other day, on impulse, and seeing I was already buying the Win32 one. I'll try that too.)

 

[Sol]

5.1 output from DVDs with spdif

Apparently there are sometimes issues with getting 5.1 sound through the spdif on some creative cards. In some cases sound won't play in 5.1 until you play a 5.1 sound(that sounds obvious). What I mean is that a DVD with stereo sound may not play unless you play a bit of an AC3 track first. Of course that was with an audigy card and since there are very few DVDs without an AC3 track (even those which are just stereo are somtimes upmixed for quality reasons) it probably won't come up too often. But if your trying to use the same speaker setup for other stuff this issue can be a real pain in the neck.

 

[The JoJo]

I just tried out Galeon, a web browser. It impressed me with it's speed, it's very fast. Based on mozilla I think.
Do try it out!

I haven't had the time to put the H+ and the Digital out in working order . Hopefully this weekend.

All ideas, rants and recommendations are welcome in this thread! Especially if they consern linux.

Later...

 

[The JoJo]

Hi!

Sorry for the lack of updates to this thread (don't know if anyone expected any but anyways... ).

My SBLive is working very well, but the Realmagic Hollywood+ card has been a bit of a problem. When installing the drivers I get some unresolved symbols and that's that. I'm just waiting for some help from the driver mailing list.
Due to not getting the Realmagic working, or it's digital out, I haven't tried the Optical out for my soundblaster (to my Dolby Digital / DTS amplifiers).

Other than that, everything has been working very well.
I just updated a7v133-> a7v266-e and Athlon 1400 -> Athlonxp 1800 and 512 pc133 -> 512 ddr and SMC nic -> 3c905c, the upgrade went without bigger problems. Only had to switch places with the H+ and the NIC due to linux not finding the nic.

System has been up pretty much 24/7, and stability is good (no surprise here..)

As for the desktop, (as mentioned in another current thread), yeah KDE could use some help. Feels a bit bloaty to me...

Only problem at the moment is to get this damm thing quiet (nothing new here either....)

Later...