On Monday 17 May 2010 01:53 PM, jtd wrote:
On Sunday 16 May 2010 21:54:14 Rony wrote:
Hello,
There is no xorg.conf in the X11 directory
Xorg -configure
sudo: xorg: command not found
or simply copy an existing one to /etc/X11/. X will use it and overide automatic settings if it exists.
and on the net many others too have reported facing this problem with older 845 mobos.
There is no text based or gui control to adjust display related settings like refresh rate etc.
With kdm, the control center - peripherals - display settings. Gnome has something similiar.
It has preset values that you cannot change.
As with other modern distros before it, it appears that slowly Linux
You mean ubuntu?.
Looks more like Ubuntu. I am trying out the Fedora 12 to see how that runs.
is going the Windows way where the simple text file configuration is being replaced by system automated processes and the user is loosing control of his system unless he/she is an advanced expert. At least in Windows there are GUIs for hardware setups to replace or update drivers.
Not quite. With linux distros the text conf files continue to exists and will over ride the app defaults. BTW i hate the gconf madness.
At some office I was giving a demo in printer sharing and booted 2 systems with Ubuntus but there was no dhcp server so static ips had to be given. There was no provision for that in the default network manager. Even after editing the network connection manually by GUI, the network manager did not respond with a connection. I edited the interfaces file and got both machines to ping each other but they simply refused to get talking in the GUI. The longer process is to replace NetworkManager with wicd but it is a nuisance.
Ubuntu appears to be too interested in racing ahead of other distros even at the cost of stability. This makes the Ubuntu system good for Beta testers and as a latest toy but not good for serious users.
Ubuntu is debian unstable + testing. So it is going to be unstable in exchange for the latest. Use debian stable + backports + self compiled (and self tested).
Ubuntu 9.04 was a nice distro and ahead of Lenny when it came out but it was quite decent in usage and stability.
There should be some automated benchmarking software that tests their distros on various machines and reports problems, in simulated conditions. That way they don't have to depend only on filed bug reports to correct problems.
Hardware in India are not the same as available elsewhere. Consequently there is no alternative to thorough selftest.
For a change, I downloaded the Fedora 12 live + install CD and it looks quite good. Ubuntu 10.04 uses the 2.6.32 kernel and Fedora 12 uses 2.6.31, very close. The live CD boots fine with 512 MB RAM. Its installation was the fastest I've seen as it simply copies the entire cd image to the hard disk, reboots and then adds new users. This live CD installs only on Ext4 partitions. It comes with gnome and has no OpenOffice. I took the opportunity to download Oxygen Office 3 and installed its rpms. OxygenOffice has better compatibility with Office2007 files.
In both the distros Google Earth crashes in my Intel 845 mobo with a requirement for a forced restart. In Fedora12, the display goes not get garbled, it simply freezes. However Google earth works fine in my Acer Laptop with 915 chipset and Lenny. However due to its 256 MB RAM, its painfully slow.
Afaik googlearth requires atleast 2D acceleration and hughe amounts of ram. So i845 boards wont work anyway. A reasonable comparison would be to test GE on doze, then linux on a 845.
I will do that and report back.
Like Vista and Windows 7, it looks like those who want to use the latest Linux distros will have to upgrade their systems for better stability and display support.
Using unstable wont make a difference to stability on any hardware. If you use 2d/3d accel apps, you must use 2d/3d accel hardware.
What I've noticed is that all these distro kernels are compiled in a customised way so they are different form each other though their version may be the same. This brings variety but also adds to the problems. Some work just beautifully and some give a lot of trouble.