Migrating To Linux
 

OK,

I've been playing about with Linux for about 10 years but never quite managed to migrate ... I now a lot of stuff about it but a lot of it just doesn't "gel" in my head. I'm posting this in Newbie but, as I imply above, I'm not really one ... I am a frustrated Linux user and a Windows Techy.

I'm the latter coz it's my job and the former because I have always had problems trying to migrate to Linux ... I've never quite managed to be able to do exactly what I want on Linux that I could do easily on Windows. Recently however I've had Vista on my system and not to put too fine a point on it I really, really hate it ... I mean yes, it's professional and slick and all those other things but it just seems so damned slow and somehow less interesting. Worse still, as a techy, I have found it incredibly hard to customise the thing as I always could with XP ... so maybe the time is ripe for a move to Linux?

My biggest problem is likely to be hardware ... seems to me that the Linux community seems to have a tradition of being able to re-use anything and everything and almost has an, "ain't dead until it's dead" style philosophy whereas I have (like any good Windows Techy) embraced much of the latest hardware. As a consequence I have a P4 socket 775 system with 2Gb DDR2, 640GB RAID0 (hardware, fake-raid) drive, PCI-E 256Mb GeCube video, 22" widescreen monitor, dual layer DVD and DVD/CDRW, removable hard drives (upon which I plan to install Linux as I know it has issues with fake-raid), wireless keyboard, mouse and joystick, blue tooth tablet thing, a number of USB hard drives and a Leadtek Hybrid TV card ... the system runs as part of a Windows 2003 domain.

Software wise my most important applications are probably MS Office 2003, Paint Shop Pro 8, Skype (less of an issue now I own a dual skype-phone), MSN Messenger, Firefox, VideoLAN, Real Player, Audiograbber and something called RocketDock. I'm not a big fan of OpenOffice really but then neither am I fan of Office 2007 ... much prefer Office 2003. I'm not much of a gamer either, I play a play-by-e-mail game called VGA Planets and the Open Source version of Privateer ... VGAP has at least one Linux client (I haven't tried it yet) and Privateer, originally a Windows only game, is now available on multiple platforms.

My favourite distro is SuSE ... it was the first one I ever tried (about 10 years ago) and despite trying every major distro around (and an awful lot of the smaller ones) I still keep coming back to it. I also like Gentoo. I've tried to like Gnome and still don't overmuch but I worry that KDE is just that bit too much "Windows" and I tend to dislike distro's that have everything under the sun (one day I'd really love to build a system from the group up, starting with the Linux kernel and layering everything on it as I need it) because I want a coherent and understandable build.

So that's it ... I suppose my first question is hardware (full listing below); is this all supportable under Linux and what do I do if something isn't supported?

• Asus P5ND2 Sli S775 Motherboard (DDR2, Gb NIC, Realtek Audio)
• 3.4GHz P4 775 (2Mb cache)
• 2Gb 667MHz DDR2
• 640GB RAID 0 based on 2 Seagate 320GB SATA2 drives (on-board FAKE RAID)
• *400GB SATA1 drive (Hitachi I think) upon which I will install Linux.
• PCI-E 256Mb DR3 GeCube XTO video card
• 22" widescreen monitor
• Dual layer DVD
• DVD/CDRW
• MS Wireless keyboard & mouse
• Logitech Freedom 24 Joystick
• Leadtek DTH2000 Hybrid TV card

The Windows 2003 AD domain will be an important consideration since everything is accessed by network and all my documents, video, music & photos are stored on the Windows 2003 server.

That's it.

Kyu

Get the live cd version of Opensuse 10.3 and see what works. http://software.opensuse.org/

Hi sir! Suggest you try using the LiveCD's of Ubuntu, Fedora 8 and OpenSuse, these are the more enterprise quality distros i have tested. By using a liveCD you will be getting a more or less good indication of the hardware support of each Linux Distro...

Unfortunately it doesn't look like OpenSUSE LiveCD works on this system ... the disk tested as OK on my Test PC.

My best guess is that this is a hardware conflict.

Kyu

Try ubuntu then fedora..if you still get hardware errors then going to linux is going to be...a little difficult

Make sure you burn the CD as an .iso disk image.

OK (I have several other distro's on my server so I'll try them too) ... can't help but find it a little disappointing that Linux might not be able to run on more rec3ent hardware (especially as it's getting on for a year old) :(

You get that I'm a Windows techy right? You get that I know a fair amount amount about PC's and that I installed my first Linux distro 10 years ago yeah? Trust me ... my ability to burn iso's isn't the issue here :)

Kyu

OK, so I decided to try and install an older DVD version of OpenSUSE (10.0 according to the readme file) ... I'm still downloading 10.3 DVD.

2 interesting things happened.

Firstly it informed me that I was trying to install 32 bit software on a 64 bit system so the obvious question is does the OpenSuSE group do a 64 bit version? Secondly it worked up to the install menus.

It was ready install to my spare 400Gb drive as dev\sdc but that raises other questions ... my Windows Vista installation is on a RAID 0 drive so I need to be sure it won't corrupt it (Linux doesn't like Fake Raid drives) as Linspire did on my test machine and if the drive is dev\sdc is that because it is "behind" the raid drives and will that cause problems if/when I make the disk the default boot (by altering the BIOS boot order will that drive suddenly be considered to be dev\sda or some such and nothing work)?

So many questions.

Kyu

This indicates your motherboard is fine.

Is your graphics card ATI? I think if so, Linux should work, even if not as well as on Windows or if it was an nVidia card.

The DTH2000 I have no idea about. Haupaugge cards seem to be the one people have written drivers for (I use one under Linux).

The rest look standard, so the only big issue to get you installed looks like the raid issue. I'm really not clear on RAID though - am trying to learn at the moment.

I would try Mandriva 2008 or *buntu 7.10. They seem to work with the most hardware in my experience. I have seen a few people have problems installing by live CDs, but have no problems with "proper" install CDs/DVDs.

I run 32bit Mandriva 2008 on two Core duo machines and a P4 3G and 2007.1 on a Core Duo. My understanding is that 32it version should run on 64 bit processors. Is the P4 really 64bit?

Sometimes you have to do text installs. Kubuntu 7.04 wouldn't install on my laptop in graphical mode, but Mandriva 2007.1 and 2008 would as it recognised newer hardware much better.

OpenSuSE does make a 64 bit version
second, there is no such thing as dev\sdc, its /dev/sdc
the BIOS boot order does not effect linux's detection of drives as far as I know, type fdisk -l at the command line to figure out your drives

Thanks for that ... I've bookmarked it.

Well it's a GeCube but yeah ATI Radeon X800 chipset

My problem there is I don't actually like them, I like SuSE ... it's just one of those things I suppose.

Full P4 Socket 775 yes.

OK ... I d/loaded the 64 bit CD edition and installed it (took ages coz I opted to d/load non-OSS stuff) but at the end it fell over on the GRUB install but it did so because it was trying to write to my RAID drives I think. Interestingly I noticed it picked up my RAID drive.

Fortunately my Vista install is fine ... think I might do a backup before my next attempt.

Kyu

Well, Linux has always tended to have issues with fakeraid. The best option is to go either software raid or full raid.

The ATI card may create some issues of its own. If so, don't worry, it will run fine in the end but it may take a few little tweaks to get it properly going.

And I'm afraid that your issues really aren't a matter of the hardware being too new. I started using a Core 2 Duo over a year ago and although there were some issues during the first two months, the same could be said about the Windows that I had also installed.

If you're going to install Suse, bear in mind that it is not typical of most other distros. I find 10.3 really slick but the software management part leaves much to be desired (slow and inconvenient). Of course, if you're not the experimental type who's constantly rummaging through the software database to find new applications, that would be irrelevant.

OK (point taken about the slashes ... sorry) :)

In order to circumvent the GRUB issue not working with my RAID (despite not actually installing Linux on that drive), I removed my RAID drives (physically disconnecting their power leads) and, as I feared, the install drive then became /dev/sda.

Assuming I install Linux on that (as /dev/sda) and then reconnect the RAID drives it will, I believe, become /dev/sdc again and therefore (presumably) no longer work. So far the only solution I have come up with is to shift my RAID drives from USB ports 0 & 1 to 2 & 3 (this would allow me to put my intended Linux drive in as /dev/sda and be unaffected by whether the other 2 drives are connected or not) but I am concerned that the RAID drive will fail if I do.

My apologies for having a complicated system (part of the techy thing I'm afraid) but any ideas?

Kyu

I disagree because the newness of the equipment directly reflects on whether drivers have been written for it by what is largely voluntary effort and (assuming a lack of official drivers from the manufacturer) if someone does not have that hardware or cannot write drivers then no drivers will exist unless the hardware is fairly standard. IMO you were simply lucky.

That isn't a criticism as such but it is a "weakness" in the open source philosophy but like many of these things the OSS community has turned such things into strengths.

Thank you for the other advice :)


Kyu

I have use a quad core and geforce 8600 gt on OpenSuse, they work well. However I know many 'new' cards both ati and nvidia that won't work in linux, I am just lucky with this setup.