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06-20-2006, 10:41 PM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 101
Rep:
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Cant install any distro on my PC
I have been trying for weeks to get some form of an OS aside from Windows on my PC. I have failed time and time again. The only distro that even installs is Slackware, and that is probably the most un-user friendly OS ever created. It took me 3 days just to get internet working on that thing and my scroll wheel never worked. I have tried Kubuntu 5.04, SUSE 10 and 10.1 (both 32 and 64 bit editions)Fedora Core 4 and 5, Mandriva 2005LE, Vector 5.1, and even went as far as to try Desktop BSD (which installed and ran nicely but could never find my hardware correctly and there is 0 support avaliable) and PCBSD 1.1. I really dont know what could be the problem. None of the installers even work for me, they just lock up right near the begining. I have tried unpluging all non critical hardware, and tinkering with any BIOS settings I understood. Nothing has worked yet, and really I dont know what it could be. This is my hardware,
ECS C19-A SLI motherboard
Intel Pentium D 830 3.0GHZ (dual core with EM64T)
4 GB of Kingston DDR2 533 RAM
2 Nvidia Geforce 6600LE's in SLI (have tried each card individually as well)
Creative soundblaster sound card (4.1)
2 Seagate SATA drives in RAID 0 (for Win XP)
1 Maxtor 200GB HD (IDE) (for Linux)
Liteon DVD-RW (have tried 2 other drives as well)
Mitsumi floppy drive
420 W thermaltake powersupply
Logitech deluxe cordless desktop keyboard and mouse
View Sonic E90f 21" CRT monitor
I really dont know what to do any more, it just doesnt make sense to me.
Thanks in advance
Last edited by dreakon; 06-20-2006 at 10:42 PM.
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06-21-2006, 02:37 AM
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#2
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Senior Member
Registered: Feb 2003
Location: CT
Distribution: Debian 6+, CentOS 5+
Posts: 1,323
Rep: 
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Have you tried a Text install of any of the systems maybe the GUI installers are gumming up the works. BTW where in the install process is it freezing, is it on booting, if so, where in the boot process, if during the install where in the install? Is it the same place in all installers or different parts?
Alex
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06-21-2006, 08:11 AM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 101
Original Poster
Rep:
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I have tried the text installers for SUSE, Fedora, and Madriva, they seem to freeze a little in to detecting my hardware. But I cant see any errors because it just turns in to curropt code. My best guess is that it happens arround the same time it detect my hard drives, I have tried unplugging the SATA drives, but still haven't gotten much further.
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06-21-2006, 08:45 AM
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#4
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Senior Member
Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Houston, TX (usa)
Distribution: MEPIS, Debian, Knoppix,
Posts: 4,727
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Have you tried running Knoppix or MEPIS? Just running, not necessarily installing.
Knoppix is good indicator, & the MEPIS install disk is also a bootable, live CD. 2 downsides to MEPIS: I can't find out if there is a 64-bit ver. yet; & I have one (but only 1) report of the CD running live, but the install failing.
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06-21-2006, 10:55 AM
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#5
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HCL Maintainer
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: McCalla, AL, USA
Distribution: Arch, Gentoo
Posts: 6,941
Rep: 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dreakon
I have been trying for weeks to get some form of an OS aside from Windows on my PC. I have failed time and time again. The only distro that even installs is Slackware, and that is probably the most un-user friendly OS ever created. It took me 3 days just to get internet working on that thing and my scroll wheel never worked.
I really dont know what to do any more, it just doesnt make sense to me.
Thanks in advance
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Just stick with Slackware. It will be a steep learning curve, but you'll learn Linux.
To make the mouse wheel scroll in Slackware, it's quite simple. Open a terminal (konsole), log in as root, then issue
Code:
pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and in the Section "InputDevice" for the mouse you must have these two lines:
Code:
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
It's really that easy, and many more things in Slackware are just as easy.
The main difference in Slackware and those other distros you mention is the philosophy. Slackware doesn't setup and configure everything in your system for you. We are intended to learn, to search, and to read -- not to point and click.
I don't know why you're "installing a Linux distribution" in the first place. If you just want to point and click, and not learn anything or experience an OS that performs well, then you should stick with Windows XP or Mac OS-X.
If, on the other hand, you want to learn something about an OS that multi-tasks as well as Bill Gates steals, then learn and run Slackware! The Slackware forum at LinuxQuestions.org has some great Slackers -- and some brilliant guys, also.
So long as you're trying, reading, and learning -- we'll help you get there.
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06-21-2006, 11:32 AM
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#6
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Senior Member
Registered: Feb 2003
Location: CT
Distribution: Debian 6+, CentOS 5+
Posts: 1,323
Rep: 
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Gates won't be stealing much longer as he's due to leave MS full time and work part time there while working full time for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. You have to admit one thing he and his wife have tried to do a lot to help others with a great deal of their money. Aside from the social note, I have a degree in computers and while I will not knock slackware, I would rather use a different distro myself. Personally my favorite is Debian, not as cutting edge as some, but a good distro with a package manager many of the other distros now use as well. But I will give a quick example of why maybe slack while a good distro might be a little frustrating. When I first installed debian, which is rather user friendly even with the old installer I could not figure out what driver to use for my NIC, I even took it out and looked at the chipset, no help, I ended up istalling mandrake just to find out what driver to use then wiping it and installing Debian again. And furthermore, I primarily use the CLI because most of my boxen are administered via SSH, and most of them are old PC's (Macs to boot) which don't take kindly to GUI's a little too taxing on the system. But I will admit I do cheat a little I like to use webmin from time to time, a little easier then opening up a config file in NANO, EMACS, or vim.
Alex
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06-21-2006, 11:42 AM
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#7
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HCL Maintainer
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: McCalla, AL, USA
Distribution: Arch, Gentoo
Posts: 6,941
Rep: 
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You could find the chipset of that NIC by issuing "/sbin/lspci" in almost all cases.
Slackware has busted my gut for a few years now, but it's also taught me tons.
One thing I liked with Debian (last used it in 2003) was the fact that it is easy to make a bare minimum install; whereas in Slackware, you must know something about the packages you select. There are a couple of guides for doing that base Debian install written by Clint something or other, iirc, which are tops. If I had known how to compile from source back then, I might have never started using Slackware. But that "apt" package manager ran me away from Debian.
And the community trying to maintain such a complicated distro in a democratic way -- that just doesn't work very well. I much prefer the autocratic Slackware system -- the buck stops with Pat, period. That stability is what I needed then, and appreciate now.
Either of these two distros would be preferable to __________________________.
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06-21-2006, 02:24 PM
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#8
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Jun 2006
Posts: 6
Rep:
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I recommend that you download a copy of Knoppix,
knoppix.org
(edit. this bloody board won't allow me to post the URL for Knoppix. Something about being a new user with less than 3 posts before allowing the posting of URL's. Really helpful, I don't think!)
and try running that first.
Knoppix will run off the CD without installing or copying anything to your hard drives and it's very good at detecting your hardware.
If you can get up and running with Knoppix, open a console and type "dmesg" (without the quotes.
What you should see is Knoppix detecting and listing all your hardware, make a note of all that you see and you will have an excellent starting point for a text install of your chosen distribution.
You can, as a trial, tell Knoppix to install itself and run from your hard drive, go through the menu for your choices.
Last edited by footloose; 06-21-2006 at 02:26 PM.
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06-21-2006, 02:59 PM
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#9
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Member
Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Distribution: Debian
Posts: 87
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chinaman
I don't know why you're "installing a Linux distribution" in the first place. If you just want to point and click, and not learn anything or experience an OS that performs well, then you should stick with Windows XP or Mac OS-X.
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Maybe he's curious. Maybe he wants to play around with the source code to KDE, or the kernel, or something else with a free compiler. Maybe he wants an operating system that's exceedingly stable.
I disagree with the attitude that Linux users have to learn the command line and should have to learn the guts of the operating system. Doing so has a lot of benefits, don't get me wrong. But the freedome of open source software should also extend to the freedom of using it how you like.
I know this is off topic, but in my opinion a huge goal for Linux should be easy installation, easy configuration, easy upgrades, and an intuitive graphic al interface. That doesn't help power users, experts, and people that really want to know how everything works. But it makes it easier for newbies to come onto the scene, and some of those newbies might go on to become experts and help make more good open source software. So ultimately an easy to use form of Linux benefits everyone.
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06-21-2006, 02:59 PM
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#10
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LQ Guru
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 6,042
Rep: 
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I suggest using the 64-bit version of Gentoo. Like Slackware, you will learn a lot, but you will be able to update libraries and programs to the specs that you want. The reason why using 64-bit OS versions is because you have 4 GB of memory. In order to use the full 4 GB of memory, you need to use 64-bit OS. If you use 32-bit OS, you will see less than 4 GB of memory because of PAE. However, not all programs can be compiled for the 64-bit environment.
The GUI installers like Mandrake, SUSE, Fedora, and others may have problems accessing the framebuffer of your SLI setup and 4 GB of memory can screw up the installer. You can include mem=512MB at the boot loader screen.
To help footloose out. Go to http://www.knoppix.org/ and pick your language.
BTW, With all those drives, processor, two video cards, your power supply will give you problems in the future. I suggest a 500 watt power supply or higher.
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06-21-2006, 04:46 PM
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#11
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Member
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 101
Original Poster
Rep:
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I tried the live version of Ubuntu and worked okay surprisingly. Just wouldn't install. And yeah I know Im going to need to upgrade my powersupply soon, but I would just rather make it count and go for at least 700W.
I've actually learned alot with SUSE and other linux distros. Ive had to use the command line to install a few programs and edit .conf files to install my graphic drivers. Ive used linux before on other computers. To tell you the truth I like Slackware, but I just don't have the time anymore to mess around with command lines. I have to work 40+ hours a week, gotta a house to maintain, a wife and son. And I can't just "stick to windows or mac os" because windows is very poor operating system, and I dont have a mac. But I really appreciate the feed back, I will try the mem=512 thing and see how it goes.
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06-21-2006, 08:33 PM
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#12
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Member
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 101
Original Poster
Rep:
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Well, I figured it out. It was a bad stick of RAM. I took out one of the sticks and it worked just fine. I feel so dumb for not trying it sooner. But it worked. Gotta give kudos to slackware for running with a bad stick of RAM though ;P
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06-21-2006, 08:58 PM
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#13
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HCL Maintainer
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: McCalla, AL, USA
Distribution: Arch, Gentoo
Posts: 6,941
Rep: 
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Good on yah! Perseverance is a great quality when learning something new -- such as an OS.
Just curious why you want 4G RAM for a desktop PC?
I could see it for a big server, but a desktop?
I have 2G RAM, only because I run Adobe InDesign and Photoshop inside WinXP inside QEMU inside Slackware. And even doing that, I rarely touch swap. I never touch swap doing anything in Slackware without running QEMU -- where I allocate 1G to QEMU, leaving 1G for my Slackware apps. In fact, I can't recall touching swap with Slackware when I only had 1G RAM.
I don't understand why my learned colleague says you can't use 4G of RAM with a 32-bit OS? My Linux kernel says:
Code:
4GB (HIGHMEM4G)
Select this if you have a 32-bit processor and between 1 and 4
gigabytes of physical RAM.
Perhaps Electro could explain that for us...
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06-21-2006, 09:01 PM
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#14
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Member
Registered: Oct 2004
Location: California
Distribution: Fedora
Posts: 87
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dreakon
Well, I figured it out. It was a bad stick of RAM. I took out one of the sticks and it worked just fine. I feel so dumb for not trying it sooner. But it worked. Gotta give kudos to slackware for running with a bad stick of RAM though ;P
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When I was piecing my computer together I went and bought 2 512 ram sticks from Fry's Electronics, only to find my computer recognizing 7xx MB of ram and freezing soon after start up. Word of experience: If you buy from Fry's expect to exchange every thing at least twice. But I think my favorite game was looking for big oily finger prints on delicate computer parts marked as "new".
Aesop's take on the story: You get EXACTLY what you pay for.
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06-21-2006, 09:11 PM
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#15
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HCL Maintainer
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: McCalla, AL, USA
Distribution: Arch, Gentoo
Posts: 6,941
Rep: 
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Ariox,
The standard Slackware kernels cannot recognize 1G of RAM. We must recompile the kernel and enable
Code:
CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y
CONFIG_HIGHMEM=y
in order to use 1 - 4 gigabytes of RAM.
Which is not to say that you didn't do so, and Fry's didn't sell you mislabeled RAM. But your post doesn't make that clear.
I've found similar experiences with NewEgg this past winter while in America. We moved from America 4 years ago, and at that time this never happened. As you say, you get what you pay for. And then you sometimes pay shipping and restocking fees to replace the bad part they sent you. I found it was better to buy parts locally whenever possible, so long as the cost difference was minimal.
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