Greetings to all

I wandered onto this site because of some info provided to me by another resident where I live.

I am interested in getting away from The Great Satan's operating system . . Windblows . . . the problem I have been having is that so far no version of Linux that I have tried has provided me with equal to, or better than I already have with Windblows Vista.

I tried Fedora 8 . . Ubuntu 9 (I think) . . and Debian 5 (AMD 64)

of the 3, Fedora seemed to run the best . . the problem being Fedora is only 32bit . . so why bother when I already have a 32 bit operating system

I have a laptop . . *cringing* yes I know, too many laptops are poorly supported by all versions of Linux, even though laptops are outselling desktops by a wide margin and it would seem that not supporting them runs counter to the overall best interest of the Linux community

I have a Toshiba P205D-S7454
AMD Turion 64 X2
2GB Ram
ATI Radeon X1200 graphics
Atheros 802.11b/g wireless
160GB HDD
DVD Supermulti drive

I dont do high end gaming so anything pertaining to that is a non-issue

the most common things I do is web browsing . . IM chatting . . word processing . . and file sharing

I have already tried Open Office and while I have been a long term Word Perfect user I can learn OO, and it does read my Word Perfect documents


some softwares that are vital to what I do frequently are VLC media player (I have seen the thread in here where someone was having problems getting it to run under Debian)

WinRAR . . this one is essential because the majority of filesharing I do is with compressed files

hjsplit . . again, essential for breaking down large video files for sharing and then reassembling them

uTorrent . . I do get a fair number of video files via bit torrent

for IM chatting . . mostly Yahoo IM

my one game addiction is mahjongg . . so a version that runs under debian would be nice :-)


I do not need the exact softwares I listed . . but I DO need functional equivalents . . that run properly under Debian 5 AMD 64 version . . . . I have already downloaded the dvd iso for Debian 5.0.4 (AMD 64) disk 1



any information I can get concerning software to use so I can continue the primary things I use my laptop for would be greatly appreciated . . . while I am not a true geek . . I do have a fair degree of knowledge and skill with computers


thank you

Firefox is named Iceweasel in Debian. Opera also has a Debian repo
VLC is in debian-multimedia and works in my experience.
There's an unrar program in non-free
hjsplit is lxsplit in debian-multimedia
uTorrent runs well in wine, or you can choose from any of the native Linux torrent programs
Pidgin works with Y!
There are a couple Mahjongg programs in the repositories

You may have wirless / gfx card issues, but I can't speak to them (I specifically bought my laptop with Intel wireless and graphics, knowing I'd put Linux on it)

All of these by the way were found with 30 seconds on Google or packages.debian.org..

2 members found this post helpful.

Fedora 8 is very old and no longer supported. But Fedora does have 64 bit versions.

There are a number of mahjong versions for linux.
http://packages.debian.org/search?ke...le&section=all

Also included in the gnome-games package.

Unrar is available for linux.
http://packages.debian.org/search?ke...le&section=all

There are a number of archive manager GUIs, including xarchiver, squeeze, file-roller...

No idea about the splitting, but I'm sure there is something.

There are many torrent apps for linux. Deluge, Ktorrent, Vuze, Transmission, to name a few.

IM: Pidgin, Kopete, Amsn, and some others.

Linux is not Windows.

Some things will be better, some things will be worse, many things will just be different, which to most people will seem worse until you get used to it.

If you have specific problems, ask about specific problems.

The differences among those are tiny compared to the difference between Windows and Linux. So I don't think you'll find a big difference by distro hopping.

I'm surprised (surprised that Fedora seemed better to you, and surprised that Fedora isn't available 64 bit). I've never used Fedora, so I'm not sure.

For most uses with 2GB of ram, there should be barely any difference noticeable between 32 bit Linux and 64 bit Linux. So I think you shouldn't worry about that. If 32 bit Fedora worked best (I'm still surprised, because I don't think Fedora is a good beginner choice) maybe you should keep it.

Lack of support is usually not because of a choice by the Linux community. It usually is a choice by the manufacturer. If they keep technical documentation secret, the Linux support is likely to be flawed.

I don't understand what you're expecting Linux to do. You want to get away from Windows but Linux isn't going to wash your car and pay your bills. It's an OS and nothing more. It's up to you on requirements and ways you plan to use it. You have to want to learn Linux and have some patience. It's like moving to a new town / city. You don't know where anything is or what to do on the weekend but after some time, you'll realize and become more comfortable.

1 members found this post helpful.

well . . it would have been nice if Linux would have allowed me to connect to the internet so I could check my email

what I would have liked it to do is allow my 64bit laptop to operate properly

I tried it . . it didnt work . . so I am dropping the whole thing . . this was the 4th time in the past two years I had tried to get a version of Linux to work on my laptop

fedora had worked the best . . I was able to connect to the internet using fedora (but as I said, since fedora is only 32 bit why bother to switch since I already have a 32 bit operating system) . . . . . . as for the comment about fedora having a 64bit version . . the last time I went to their website (even though the version book said there was a 64bit version available) the sad fact was that there was no 64bit version on the website . . and when I posted a message on the fedora board about that . . I was informed by a fedora devotee that why would anyone need a 64bit operating system

I'll check back in 5-10 years to see if Linux has matured to the point where ordinary people with ordinary computers can actually use Linux to operate their computers . . properly

bye

0 members found this post helpful.

I assume this is wireless trouble you're having. You didn't mention that in your original post. Most atheros cards are supported using either the ath5k or ath9k drivers. These are somewhat new, so it may be that a more current distro than Fedora 8 would support your card better.

If you choose to try and get it working, I'm sure folks can help. To determine the chipset of the card, we need the output of
And we'd want to look at the modules loading, so the output of
I linked to where you can download the 64 bit Fedora. No idea what the folks on their forums where on about. Fedora has had a 64 bit version for ages. For example, 64 bit Fedora Core 1 from back in 2004.

Both Debian and Fedora are very strict about not including non-free software. This means more work to get certain hardware going correctly than in some other distros which do not subscribe to as high minded principles. You might be better served with something like Linux Mint.

1 members found this post helpful.

Based on the OP's most recent thread, I doubt if he/she is still with us.

OP; If you ARE listening---How do you explain all the people using Linux on a daily basis to fulfill most or all of their computing needs?

Next time around, give us the opportunity to help you.

2 members found this post helpful.

Just in case the OP reads this thread again:

Seems sensible to me. What's wrong with a 32-bit system? Your needs don't suggest that a 64-bit system is any benefit to you.

Well, the OP hadn't enough stamina to read a little bit longer and write more about his woes and wees.
But with what you here suggested, he would have run in big troubles sooner or later. And NO, you didn't give a wrong advice!
Fact is, that WINRAR some time ago seemingly changed something in its coding-method without taking properly care of the downwards compatibility. I am getting more and more RAR'red files, that the (non-free)unrar from testing refuses to decode. Maybe that from Sid could do it, I don't know.
Exporting the files to my WIN-XP-partition and then letting WINRAR (the original one) do its work always solves the decoding-misery. But shutting down Linux, start up WIN-XP, decode, shut down XP and thereafter again start up Linux is not a really nice procedure, don't you think?
Wine (not in the bottle, but the program)? Too tedious and time-consuming to install and configure and maintain, why should the OP be brought onto this path? As he has everything he wants already on his laptop with Vista!