₦airaland Forum

Linux and Vista users share driver pain
Linux kernel developers offer free support to struggling hardware manufacturers

Customers are getting annoyed. They spent good money on the latest and greatest PC peripherals, only to find out that the hardware is only partially supported on their operating system of choice. Without the kernel drivers necessary to power them, some of the best features of the new toys are going unused.

Oh, and just to be clear: The OS we're talking about is Microsoft Windows.

Hardware vendors seem to be having a tough time getting up to speed with Windows Vista, the latest iteration of Microsoft's client OS. Drivers have yet to emerge for many products that have worked for years under XP, and those drivers that do exist are buggy or missing features.

Link hia: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/12/07OPopenent_1.html

At last! finally got ma philip saa7134 tv card working on fedora core 6!Watching NTA channel 10 now with audio working fine!

excuse me guys!!i really hate debating on stuffs like this and i've always try to avoid it, but i know what i know. Let's do something constructive with this thread than arguing.
Jogego, where are you?Think i miss u pal. Anyone has better clue on configuring saa7134 tv tuner card on fedora core 6!

@texazzpete, you've mistaken me.I started this thread in the first place. i am not an advocate for linux in trying to win users for linux.No! check ma post. i write tutorials and howtos on this thread. i give news on development and related tips on linux. Don't give a damn if you use linux or not. Torvaldo does not care less too.
This is not a war of user friendliness or not, neither a btw windoze and linux. There are diff OS outthere, so pick your choice and let the world rest. Don't get linux users wrong, they are only expressing their gratitude and enthusiasm for discovering something new,maybe the truth.
The truth is linux is developing and it's doing it pretty fast than anyone could imagine.Just give it some time more and you will see wonder.
Let me give you a tip. linux is wide, very wide. So it kinda difficult to have a single gui that would do effectively what an application is meant to do. i do scripting alot and i've wondered too why there are no gui fit to do them easily. But no, the script are updated with new features now and then. i configure all ma servers using their respective scripts, and strongly thought if a gui can expressively do what the scripts are doing.
so pls get real. Linux has come to stay and is seriously a threat to windoze. or why is Mr bill gate suddenly insterested in partnership with Norvell (SUSE linux)?

well i can still say people are still un-informed. who says linux is not userfriendly?The lazy i guess?
Let get one thing straight if you like windoze,fine no wahala. if you are for linux, it's yr choice. I ve been using redhat/fedora releases for more than 2 years now and i ve not missed ma windoze. i feel comfortable using the gui and learning the commandline all the time. it's pretty fun having new things to discover and learn about your os and hardware. e.g i just got a philips tv card which i m configuring on my fedora. fine, it's not working out-of-the-box but it's have made me to learn more about tv cards and tuner in such a few time. i now know about bttw and saa7134 tv chipsets and their various tuners. i like learning. But everything is a matter of choice.
People learn windoze in a way, only dat there aint much to learn there. Like i ask ma friends back at skol, "what's the difference between you and the female typist at the Student Union Building using windoze?" practically what you can boast about windows as a graduate, they know it too . The computer students in ma school are now running around to get an edge by learning linux. That's it, you sometimes need the edge. i can drop to windoze anytime without worry. So i spend ma precious times learning linux to get the edge.

got the cd from a friend. the linux version is like 250mb. can wait to dowload dat, u know.

Thanks to wine. i can install Wolfenstein into my windows partition and play it on my fedora linux.with wine the game is loaded without hitch into my linux box and i'm pretty getting addicted to the game now.Gotten to mission 4:catatomb, and have been battling with the fire razing zombies!

kinda not vote for d4x as a good download manager on linux. it kinda slow compared to window's popular Download Accelerator Plus(DAP).
The best i pretty use is prozilla. It's equally fast, if not faster than DAP. It can setup multiple connections to the downloaded file and resume download, just like DAP. Again it has a command line and gui interface. Just a small files less than 200kb but perform wonder! The CL interface is detailed and interesting. So i did not bother installing the gui in ma own case.give it a try, it's the best!

finally got my video playback 2 be smooth after countless hours of tweakin.
Sign! But i bet it worth the work. The desktop is pretty good.

Let me say for the past 24hours now i've been navigating my desktop at the comfort of BERYL. If you haven't tried it out, you ve to give it a shot.It's the future desktop for LINUX OS. It's full of outstanding effects. I must say u need a 3D graphics card which can be gotten for a cheap price this day.(got 64Mb maself).
The only issue i ve wiv it for now is dat ma video playback drags a little and out of sound sync when at fullscreen. When ever i want to play video for a long time at fullscreen i just disable ma beryl. I equally wrote a bash script to automatically launch beryl at new login like this

#!/bin/bash
beryl-manager

i save this as beryl.sh under ~/kde/Autostart directory and make it executable by doing
chmod u+x beryl.sh

I hope beryl and video playback apps solve the full screen issue soonest.

Finally got fc6 installed.Bye bye core 5.Think i'm gonna miss dat.Anyway a new fc6 is now running on ma celeron 2.6Ghz 512Mb and 64Mb GeForce MX4000 VGA card. Fc6 has no prob detecting ma Geforce card. i only have to download the kernel mod and xorg driver to enable direct rendering.
I'm currently enjoying Cube2(sauerbraten).
Another thing i could notice immediately is the great sound quality of alsa.wow!, there's great improvement in the sound.
I also have my beryl setup fine and i'm havin my desktop turnin round in cube.Amazing!
More detail review to come later. Gotta setup some servers.

Do this
vi /etc/inittab

change the line with defaults:3 [/b]to [b]5
save and reboot

you should get the graphical login now

@adewaleafolabi, solution to your ppp disconnect problem
i just installed suse10 on a p3 laptop and faced the same problem of ppp disconnect when wvdial is used to dial the internet. This is how i solved it.
open the /etc/ppp/options file and comment out this two lines by putting # before each lines like this

#lcp-echo-interval 30
#idle 600

this stopped my ppp from disconnecting.
sure it will work for you too.
cheers!

A year of big gains
While the operating system market is still dominated by Microsoft and shows little sign of changing that doesn't mean that all other options have failed hopelessly because there were some significant gains made over the past 12 months. Below are some good examples:

IBM will not use Windows Vista - but will move to Linux desktops
IBM cancelled their contract with Microsoft last October which means that they will no longer use Windows for their desktops. Beginning July, IBM employees will begin using a Red Hat-based platform.

The City of Chicago goes Linux, saves over 85% in the process
Big elements such as the vehicle registrations system, online job applications, restaurant inspections and more were migrated to a Red-Hat system in order to reduce costs and improve support, performance and scalability.

Munich opts to use Debian version of Linux
The city of Munich has opted to use the Debian version of Linux for a high-profile, 14,000-computer installation, passing over Novell's Suse Linux despite its regional popularity. Another massive win.

Ubuntu is noted as being #27 in PCWorld's 100 Best Products of the Year
Clearly a great result being placed above the iPod, iTunes, Google Desktop, Flickr and other good products.

Linux cuts Kent Police system costs by 90% by using SuSE
Kent Police has cut the cost of running its major criminal investigations system by 90% using Novell Open Enterprise Server, the company's version of SuSE Linux.

Kerala (an Indian state) goes Linux
Children in 12500 high schools in the state will not be taught Windows. Instead instructors are lining up Linux for them. Another good win for Linux.

Venezuela's Government Shifts to Open Source Software
According to government sources in Venezuela, the South American nation has announced an official policy that exclusively calls for the use of open source software in that government.

Korea migrates 120K civil servants to Linux desktop
The Korean government is to buy 120,000 copies of Hancom Linux Deluxe this year, enough to switch 23 per cent of its installed base Microsoft user to open source equivalents. So another 120,000 users.

Dell refunds Linux users who ditch XP
Dell, a massive player in the computer market have obviously accepted the need for this as an option for those users who do not wish to have Windows. A reasonably good gain as far as the consumer is concerned.


extracted from: http://www.seopher.com/articles/another_lost_year_for_linux_i_think_not?PHPSESSID=555dca3716b59fb44b553a5a2b5caf0b

Hey! no one seems to talk about suse
My sis has a DEL laptop {spec: 800Mhz, 256kb processor cache} and i decided to wipe it clean of windoze and install SUSE 10.
It's pretty amazing!
SUse has lot of things in common with REDHAT and i still has a feel of my fedora when working on it.
Will soon write a full review on suse10

i don't really like playin games, but do play once in a while. i like cube. About your GPRS connection. Which network are u dialing into?Which distro of linux are u using?

hey guys! are u a duke3d lover like me?
During my days of windows my favorite game is duke3d. Now, fully a chronic linux user i missed duke3d. but ive been on it, tryin to port the windws duke3d to linux. Finally i did. I can now play the full version of duke on my fedora core 5 with no flaw!

Fedora rocks!

what brand of fone are u using?
In my own case i ve don't have such issue.

Sup guys! Happi festive season!
Quite a while since i had written anything on this thread. Jst had the oppurtunity to make use of a friends celtel line for internet access and decided to make the configuration on Linux. With windows, i know many people would fine it easier to setup. But i must confess i find it more easier on linux box than windows. I've done the setup on both os and i know what's up. The trick is know what you are doing.
Like i like to write, i write what i've done and how it worked.
I use FC5( not been able to get 6 for now), and i'm strictly a command line person, so know wht to expect.
The tool i find convenient to use is the wvdialconf [/b]tool. It can do everything (automatically i would say). So let's do it.

just type
[b]#wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf (note the root priviledge sign)

This would automatically detect your modem and setup it up as required, no flaws.
It would generate the script /etc/wvdial.conf as appropriate for your modem( in this case my sony ericsson p910i)
This is what you would see first;

[Modem0]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 115200
SetVolume = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Init1 = ATZ
Init3 = ATM0
FlowControl = CRTSCTS


After this, there is two ways to do the final configuration that dial into your required network.
1. using your gui to create a modem connection, where you supply the phone number to dial, the username and password
2. you can add the phone number to dial, the username, password parts to the script manually. The parts added should look like this

[Dialer celtel]
Phone = *99***1#
Username = internet
Password = internet
Stupid Mode = 1
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Inherits = Modem0


Let me explain some parts here,
the [Dialer celtel] is the name of the connection you dial, can be any name
the Phone = *99***1# is the phone number (this is for a phone incorporation a modem), need to find out what it is for which modem you are using, e.g for multilinks it is #777 or so. Again in the *99***1# the number you have to note and change in your own to 1,2,3 to match the CID of your phone.
the[b] Username = internet[/b] and the Password = internet must be supplied even if the network does not require on. In my own case, the celtel network does not have a user name and password assigned to me but i ve to use an abitary one which is internet.
Dont bother about the other part of the script, they are needed so just put them there and if you have to bother about what the do, get documentations from the net.

Save your script and then do
#wvdial celtel ( the name from [Dialer celtel])
This is what i get
[root@xeleon gbenga]# wvdial celtel
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
OK
--> Sending: ATM0
ATM0
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99***1#
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT*99***1#
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Sun Dec 24 14:48:34 2006
--> pid of pppd: 7006
--> Using interface ppp0
--> local IP address 10.103.129.71
--> remote IP address 10.103.255.254
--> primary DNS address 196.46.241.5
--> secondary DNS address 196.46.241.6

To stop your connection press
CTL+C

If you notice the wvdial automatically start the ppp daemon required for modem connection.

jez! who says UT4 can't run on linux. @Romulus i think these links will be good for you.

http://www.lokigames.com/products/ut/
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/unrealtourn2k4/ut2004-lnxpatch3369-2.tar.bz2.html

With Linux all things are possible!

?why are some people getting hitchy about LINUX. Torvaldo said " if you use or don't use linux you do him no favor, " So the quicker you get this idea of learning and optimizing linux capability to solve your system services the better. I love linux not because of what it can do, but what it makes me to learn. A good system administrator is one who can balance the potential of any OS to maximize profit. If there are things windows is doing fine for you, use it to solve them and if linux is behaving fine on a certain part, all to the good!Linux has been serving me good so i use LINUX ONLY. I would not trade the fact that linux don't not mount the file system of my p910i phone throught the sync station to having to live with viruses on windows who does sees my p910 fine. Hell no! Just relax, with time all these things you ve been enjoying on windows will be ported to linux. Infact some have been already. And if you are losing your patience, you can learn to do them to help others too. oops! Don't forget that the developers in linux are not been paid for the work we complain about. They make no profit. These programmers are just like you. They have to learn new things to improve their skills, so pls stop complaining if linux is not doing you any good. Just leave it.

I envy your sys spec. Hope to get a dvd writer soon.

Try startx or init 5 at the command line. If this doesn't work then you have to fine a way of installing the KDE, Enlightenmet or GNOME GUI from the debian Cd rom. Enjoy!

Again, mult-user and multi-tasking is a know capability of linux. Windows don't do multi-user but a different form of multi-tasking called task switching. It is a standalone system. it is designed for just one user. When windows created user accounts, its only giving you the option of customizing each users desktop theme.
Mult-user explains when different users can login into a machine at the same time and work without jeopardy in performance. This linux does effectively. This is a function of the type of network or terminal connection available to your system. Meaning userA can be working locally while userB login into his/her account thru the network and work conveniently also.
Multi-tasking is when an operation system can perform more than one thing at the same time. It can be divided into two task switching and task slicing.
Task switch is similar to queuing up tasks. when you open an application and then open another, window queue them up and open them after the other. so if the first on is not responding it affects the execution of another. That's when windows freezes up after performing an illegal operation or becomes unstable.
Linux do task slicing. Tasks are executed in a form of slice. When different apps are launched, linux slices them up and execute them in a form of slice. So no apps disturb the other. The more apps your try to launch at the same time , the longer the time it takes them to open. Tha's why linux rarely(doesn't ) freeze up. Linux is also able to detect an apps not responding b4 you even notice. Tha'ts why KDE quickly tells u about the termination of an unresponding task.

Contributions are welcome pls. L8a.

@ scribe,
thx man, i ll do somethin about dat soonnest.

I quickly want to explain the reason why linux does not need defragmentation.
As we all know windows file system is VFAT while linux is Ext3. FAT file system stores files sequencially and each time the string of data been store encounter another bit streams which are already stored, windows create a linker as the last bit of the file been store to the free block where the stored data will continue. That's why you have bits of same file flying all over the hdd. So each time windows want to access a file it has to first search for the complete file bits all around the hdd hence windows slows down with time. Thus frequent crashes set-in. Due unprompted power down, data are lost and difficult to recover. This explain the frequent boot up problem due to missing file. Hence defragmentation is necessary to bring the file bits together.
But in linux, this is not an issue.
Linux creats what is call a superblock in every partition on the system when you create an ext3 file system. this is similar to the master boot sector on the first partition. linux stores what is called the an inode table in each superblock. An inode table is the address of each file stored on the hdd. This gives it the address of the location of the full file size stored. When a file is requested, instead of search like windows, it just chech the inode table and get the full address of the requested file. Brilliant. The inode table also store the information about each bit store so data recovery is very efficent in linux. the inode table also store security and permission info about each file store. Wow! so linux doesnot do defragmentation.
Files can be checked by their inode numbers with this command,
ls -i

i wll soon talk about multitasking in windows and linux.

i'm actually not a game person but since i got my Celeron 2.6Ghz 512MB with the lastest VIA Unichrome p4m800 VGA chipset, i decide to explore the world of linux games. Cube, Alienarena 2006, ppracer and foobillard were my target. These are heavy 3D games i hope to enjoy but an issue came up. The games drags. This wz pretty painful and i had to spend almost a week getting my 3D feature enbled in my kernel in order to enjoy these game. This is wht led to this tutorial. i decide to discuss Direct Rendering Management. This is for interested games.
your p4 2.6 GHz can be as slow as a p1 233 if you don't have DRI (direct rendering Infrastructure) installed and enabled on your box. This might be restricted to FC5, that's what i use.
For anything 3D on your linux you need OpenGL, and the free version implemented linux is called Mesa3d (www.mesa3d.org). Aside this you need the DRM package. With this two things your games are ready to fly. So we will be talking about "glx" and "dri". This two must be loaded by the kernel and this can be checked in you xorg.conf file. you will see lines that reads load "glx" load "dri".
But this does't still mean your dri is enabled, so to check do
glxinfo | less
you would get a line that reads Direct Rendering = yes
if no you have to find a way of installing drm and it's kernel modification rpm package or source code compilation. i wz lucky to get the rpm for drm for FC5 from ATrpm.org ( you can google for the correct link).
Another test is the
glxgears

this command should start the 3d rolling gears where you can measure your system FPS ( frame per second). If you FPS is less than 100 you can't play any 3d game. They will drag. This i experience before. After enabling dri my FPS shoot up to 600fps. This is good. now i enjoy any 3d game without fuss. if you have powerful 3d graphic adapters you FPS should be well above 3000fps. wow that sounds good!
Who says linux don't hav games? Try cube, alienarena2006. Foobillard is for snookers lover. This is absolutely 3D and fantastic.
l8a.

I tested suse10 sometimes and never liked it.Too simple for my liking. I like distros that make me learn and use the command line. With Yakuake the distance btw me and the CL is just the F12 key. Core 5 rocks and it's stable. It has supports and moreover it's based on the ever leading Redhat. The repos are just fantastic with good updates and kernel patches. Like it with passion!

welcome fisayo,
My system spec is
Intel Genuine Celeron 2.6Ghz with a motherboard of 800MHz FSB and 400MhzDDR
512DDR
50Gig HDD
17'' Samsung Samtron
Liteon CDrom/CDRW
Liteon DVDrom
Fedora core 5

Nothing like ma core 5!
Which distro do you rock on?

Try Mencoder + Kvideoencoder fontend on linux.

core 5 rocks!

My resent core 5 screenshots