I'm really eager to get Linux running on my machine but after 3 weeks of disappointments I'm really frustated. I'll summarize what I've done and would be pleased if someone cen tell me what I made wrong.

1. 3 week ago I bought a new machine: P4 3.0 HT, 512 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800, 120 GB HD. A great deal! Windows XP preinstalled.

2. Had a SuSE 9.0 Professional ready.

3. I quickly killed XP and partitioned the HD: 4 Partitions, one with a Windows 2000 Pro, a VFAT, a ReiserFS for / and another one ReiserFS /home.

4. Installed Windows 2000 Pro on the HD: no problems so far, rather quick and easy.

5. Installed SuSE 9.0. Rather komplex due to the packet management, e.g. koffice stuff is spread in sveral groups!?! But ok ...

6. First launch of Linux Kernel: mouse and keybord dead! Having a Wireless USB Mouse and Keyboard made the SuSE installation completly deaf and dumb. No way to enter root password.

7. Reboot, Reboot, Reboot, Reboot, Reboot ... I found out: during GRUB and on BIOS side keyboard and mouse were ok but as the init scripts enable the hotplug services the USB mouse and keyboard don't work any more in 8 of 10 tries! So I invastigated the whole script bypassing SuSE's config mechanism and manipulated the /etc/sysconfig/hotplug myself using the Rescue Mechanism of the SuSE DVD. SuSE installs non-default settings for the USB, kicking me out of the installion ...

8. My own fix worked fine but at least the XFree86 Server wanted a running input device right at the start and this was not every time guaranteed since it seems that USB recognition is done in another kernel thread. I also have Firewire, SmartCard and other USB stuff, that's why the X Server shuts down every now and then because of lacking a mouse and keyboard even if they are established right after! So I added a real dirty hack: sleep 10s in the hotplug script. *uahhg*

9. Then I reallized that I was viewing 1024x1024x24, but at a very low frequenz rate and that the X Server consumes one third of the CPU doin' nothing! That's 1 GHz for just been alive! I knewed that ATI 9800 driver isn't supported by XFree right away, so I downloaded the driver of ATI directly and installed it.

10. It looked real good now, but wired thing is, that all of the machine get's total freezed sometimes. No keyboard, no mouse, no on-screen animations (clock, ...). So I had to manually shut down the machine by myself and reboot.

11. As a developer I wanted to have KDevelop 3.0.1. So I tried to installed the new KDE 3.2.1. This crippled totaly SuSE's installation of KDE 3.1. The package kdebase3-SuSE totaly corruptes the KDE 3.1 installation, because you simply CAN'T install KDE 3.2.1 over it. NOT EVEN IF YOU ARE USING SuSE'S KDE 3.2.1 PACKAGES OF THEIR FTP SERVER! So I kicked kdebase3-SuSE and installed KDE 3.2.1 over it. In a rather brute form (no dependencies check, force, ...)

12. Puhhh! At least a running, real cool looking Machine/Desktop. It freezes sometimes, but well: that's ugly, nasty but I can live with that. ReiserFS is replying the journal then and .. on with the show.

13. All of a sudden, two days ago, the kernel started reporting some wired problems reported to the USB module. It also told me that a file system check failed and I should go in and manually do the file system check. Ok. Take the Rescue Option of the SuSE DVD again and make a fsck.reiserfs with some various options (scanning the whole partition). WOW! This took about 6 hours of work and afterwards at a new reboot the kernel couldn't find any /etc/fstab any longer as well as some other cruzial files. But my "lost+found" had aroung 50 MB!

14. Now I switched over to Windows 2000 again. It runs stable without any complaints right from the beginning. No hacking of system files needed here (besides: you can't anyway).

This is just an excerpt of some highlights of 3 weeks of frustating work.
I don't think that this is the normal procedure, is it?

I wonder if I had been better off using another distro: Debain, for instance. Or Fedora, or RedHat, ...

What was wrong?
- Using the propritary ATI 9800 driver? Could this destroyed and corrupted some of the "enhancments" of the XServer made by SuSE?
- Setting the hotplug config file to the default?
- Overriding (with --force) the old KDE 3.1 with the new KDE 3.2.1?
- Using ResierFS instead of ext3?
- Using an old 2.4 Kernel instead of a 2.6 one?

Why is the USB support in Linux that bad? Compared to Windows, recognition and handling seems rather poor and slow. I didn't had *any* troubles using Windows 2000 SP4 with my USB facilities: none. In the last 3 weeks Linux crashed a dozens of times on the same machine whereas the Windows installation had not a single fallout.

I'm defentivly NOT a Micro$oft fan. I feel in love with some KDE 3.2.1 screenshots ... I really want a running Linux on my machine, but I can't have it! I just wanted to install Linux and use it like I do it with Windows. This is obviously a false intention ...

*sigh*


Oliver

welcome to debian and slackware

from my experiences they have had the best hardware recognition, so try one of them maybe

try to stay away from SuSE, redhat, and mandrake for your application (I would say) because of their package dependencies and over-patched kernels...just my two cents, sorry to hear you're having so much trouble

SUSE, RedHat, and Mandrake are what I call "fake linux" I avoid them at all costs. They are nothing but trouble.

Whether or not the shortcomings of these distros is the cause of your problem is yet to be seen however.

Try slackware its a little hard to get used to if you've never used linux, but i install it onto my machine with no problems.

I am still looking for a better explanation to all your problems. But, as far as USB support and SuSE is concerned, my usb flash drive worked out of the box with it, and I had to install some drivers for it to run under windows.

I only once had a problem with SuSE. That was when I had made my partitions Reiserfs. I could not boot into any other Linux distro on my machine and I got the error "Kernel Panic". Switching to ext3, solved my problem.

You can also try that but, a FS should have no effect on USB support. Hope we find a solution fast.

Best.

After all I think my problems were more related to the ATI 9800 Radeon and the modified XServer involved. For the ATI Software give me a warning that I'm using a "tainted" kernel, when I apply the modules ATI provided to the kernel. Note: the kernel NOT the X Server! I think that corrupted either the kernel or X or both and devastated my ReiserFS afterwards.

As there are very few mails posted in the forums about using the ATI Radeon 9800 on Linux/X11 I didn't notice anything like that. So after all I have given up. I think I'll try it next time with Debian and some 2.6 kernel. But for now this "adventure" has taken too much time which I have to catch up again ...

Just a suggestion...but next time try Mepis. Not the beta that's just been released because it's buggy right now but try the livecd called mepis-2003.10.02.cd1.iso. You don't have to download cd2 because it never asks for it when you install to your hard drive. Just download the mepis cd1 iso and burn it as an image with nero or some other cd burning program that has burn as image as an option.

Because it's a live cd, you can just boot it without installing it and play around with it to see if it detects all your hardware and the programs on it all work right for you. If you like it, and want to install it, you can then just click on the installation icon on the desktop and follow the instructions. It's very simple, it allows dual boot, if you use the qtparted option to create 3 partitions for your installation. One for / (root), one for swap and one for /home.

I have a logitech cordless/usb mouse and keyboard and this version of Mepis recognized it right away and installed it correctly.

A "tainted kernel" simply means you're using proprietary code (ATI's driver) in your GPL, open source kernel, and that you're no longer running a transparent operating system.

Nothing to be particularly worried about, as far as interoperability.

What I'm not sure about is the enhancements in SuSE's XServer. While that sort of thing certainly shouldn't corrupt a file system, it may play into the "freezes" you're getting.

I've never really used SuSE so I can't say for sure about how it does USB detection, etc.

--Shade

I don't use wireless stuff because I don't find it useful so sadly I can't speak for hardware detection there.. but I'll say that despite some difficulty slackware isn't that bad. I like it better than mandrake and I'm a real newbie at linux. That said.. I think I learned a few things useful from mandrake.. and I don't think it's nearly as bad as those here who call it "fake linux" and the like. Mandrake is pretty good.. it's just not as stable as slackware. At the same time it was easier to get the newest drivers working with it (which I still don't have working.. but that's partially because I have XFree 4.4) than it is with slackware. I run both and windows XP professional also.

On the debian-sarge there was no real problem with the USB though it didn't find the palm cradle even when fsusb.
though i tend to blame the palm.