Linux Noob, About to Buy Vista...

[Sabbatai]

I don't expect any sympathy and I am not "mad" at anything or anyone other than myself for not knowing wtf I am doing...

Also I am posting here as the other forums seem pretty specific in what they are for and my post is very general.

My roommate and I decided to set up a computer in our living room after discovering that our wireless network while great for surfing on a laptop was horrible for viewing media through our XBox360's Media Center Extender. Constant drop outs, poor signal strength warnings and such..

So we attempted to install WindowsXP and found that a tiny little scratch on the disc was preventing us from doing so.

"Why don't we try linux?" he asked. So we did.

We started by searching for the easiest distro to use for people used to windows and with absolutely -0- knowledge of Linux. We were told to try Ubuntu. We did.

For the first three days everything was great. All of our hardware worked right out of the gate, even our wireless connection had full signal strength. We could play all of our media through VLC and it was great.

Then one day we started getting error messages concerning something along the lines DRDY Error, and something about Emask or something like that. We did some google searches and were told it could be:

1. A bad HDD. (Which works fine in my Windows PC)
2. The fact that it is a Seagate and Ubuntu has issues with Seagate drives. (Discredited by many)
3. A corrupt install. (Can't reinstall without getting the same error)
4. 500 other things.

So we decided to try another distro that was recommended as easy for noobs... Mepis.

Well first the disc insisted on running live with no options to INSTALL. Then I discovered that if I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 at just the right time, with no prompt and I only guessed to hit those buttons as somewhere along the mile-per-minute text scrolling across the screen I saw it mentioned to hit that to get to a GUI as opposed to plain black text, I finally got something that resembled a menu to appear.

No matter what I chose from the available options the disc ran live rather than installing.

I then noticed that I could backspace through what appeared to be some command line parameters and so I tried deleting everything that was there. I believe it began with something like "init something something etc".

Then lo and behold we actually got to something that resembled a desktop.

Now, nowhere on any tutorials that we read did we see anything about having to press ctrl-alt-f1 or deleting the command line entry that automatically appeared or anything of the like.

So it came time to install our wireless network again. Ubuntu seemed to work right away. Mepis, not so much.

Even after fumbling around and getting Mepis to recognize our wireless nic, which involved unchecking "start at boot" on a wired nic which seemed to take priority over the wireless nic even though it too was set to start at boot... and then several power cycles of the router, and then disabling WEP, reenabling it, disabling it again we finally got it to connect...with no security on our wireless network which is important to us because about 5 people jump on our network as soon as it is open.

Also, I should note that this only worked until we rebooted. Then.. no more network connection. I fooled around with all of the same options and such that we had messed with before to no avail.

Until I decided to click on the icon in the lower right corner that appeared as a WIRED connection with its cable disconnected and a big red X on it.

I clicked that and guess what?!! Several wireless networks appeared. Even mine and the rest were all secured. Clicking on mine resulted in several failed attempts to connect. So I chose "connect to other wireless networks" and typed in the name of ours.. exactly the same way as it appeared on the previous list of wireless networks, which would mean to me that nothing should have been any different.

Except it connected.

So I transfered a bunch of movie files over to that computer by physically taking my hdd that contains them out of my Windows pc and plugging it in to the Mepis machine and manually copying them.

Then I connected the Mepis PC to my HDTV which I had been using for Ubuntu before the issues... it was easier to install and mess with Mepis from a monitor... anyway that's when I realized that unlike Ubuntu, Mepis had no driver installed for my nVIDIA 7950. So I surfed on over to nVIDIA's site.

They had linux drivers. They even had instructions. Wow this would be easier than I thought!

Step 1. Download drivers.
Step 2. Type sh wofjwefrthertghreotgjh

Ok easy enough right? I am guessing I should type the "sh etc etc" into the terminal. Not very surprising that they don't say where to type it. This seems the norm for linux "instructions"... Windows is quite the opposite with the first instruction usually being something along the lines of "Remove CD from packaging" and the next "Place CD in your CD or DVD-ROM Drive with the label facing upward"...

Well I typed it in the terminal and was told something along the lines of the file wasn't found.

So I am now assuming that downloading the file to the desktop is not the correct place to have downloaded it to. Why can't the instructions tell me where to download it then?

So...

I am tttthhhhiiiissss close to buying another copy or license of Vista. I thought the issues I had on day one of Vista's release were bad, but they were nothing compared to my experience with Linux so far.

As I said before I know most of my problems are related to the fact that I have no idea what I am doing, but a lot of it is also the fact that there really isn't any good documentation for linux noobs.

Everything I read says something like "Type XXXX to perform action ZZZZ" but doesn't tell you where to type it and usually where I guess is wrong.

Then they'll say things like "In order to ZZZZ *all* you have to do is *simply* make sure you have your transducer array modulated to compensate your flux capacitor's overdrive functionality" as though I should just be like "Oh..yeah.. my transducer array IS modulated for just that purpose! Good thing I know what any of that is!"

The best was when 3 different websites told us that in order to configure our *WIRED* NIC we should:

1. Connect the NIC
2. Open Synaptic File Manager (or some such)
3. *DOWNLOAD* ..............................

Download? Wouldn't that involve my NIC?!?!

I am furstrated and had to vent...

Now that this is done can anyone point me to a distro that is actually user friendly? Or a guide that doesn't assume I know anything about Linux?

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

"User friendly" is very subjective and depends on each individual user as to what he/she thinks is user friendly. You can check the link in my signature for lots of good information on getting started with Linux. Some distros that are considered good for new users to start out with are Mandriva, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and Mepis. Of course there are others, but those are the ones that first come to my mind.

If you should decide to return to Windows, don't feel to badly over Linux not being what you want it to be because it's certainly not for everyone, just as Windows isn't the OS for everyone.

Whichever route you should take, I hope it all works out for you.

[Jonathan183]

You can probably add Mint to the list as well. There is a poll here, which you will also find via Ozar's links

I used SUSE for a couple of years when I first started using Linux, and found it fairly straight forward. As Ozar said user friendly means different things to different people. If you decide to give Linux another go then one thing I recommend you do is use the package manager and software repositories for the distro ... for SUSE thats YAST.

I'd try a couple more distros from the list before buying Vista ... but thats up to you ... good luck whatever you decide to do.

[bigtomrodney]

I wouldn't worry too much about the Ubuntu/Seagate thing...it was a default setting for power management that has been fixed since. The latest Ubuntu, Hardy Heron/8.04 is great with them.

I run Ubuntu with a program called ushare, which is a daemon for sharing your content out to your Xbox. I can now happily watch all of my video and look at photos etc. directly over my wireless network.

If you are still keen to get going I'd check out Ubuntu again, seeing as how it was working quite well with your hardware.

[Mad Jack]

Hi, Sabbatai, I'm new to Linux, too.

I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for your bad experiences I was very very intimidated for months just READING through the online documentation and forums about Linux as it seems so alien to a Windows-school grad. I guess I was a lot like you and just 'dove in'. I have researched for a good while now before committing...and I'm still not entirely committed to one distribution, but I went with Puppy Linux to 'test the waters' on an old computer of my Dad's.

I have to say that I'm kinda surprised that Ubuntu gave you that kind of trouble as it's one of the more 'popular' and 'user-friendly' distros. But I will tell you that I am using Puppy on an old Gateway with only 64MB RAM and it's pretty good. There's a fantastic tutorial on the Puppy website and it's pretty clear and step-by-step.

I just wanted to say that you aren't alone in feeling like you're reading an alien language sometimes with the instructions out there.

[Sabbatai]

We managed to get Mepis running with all of our hardware working aside from my nVIDIA card. For the life of me I can't figure out what I am doing wrong.

I am planning on going back to Ubuntu when I get home tonight, since as I stated it all worked fantasically...until we began getting the DRDY/Emask errors.

I am a bit worried that getting it all set up again will just result in the same errors even after it works for 3 days.

I am not asking for help here, as this is the LOUNGE. I just needed to vent I suppose.

I would still like to know if there is a good glossary of terms used in Linux distros, and maybe anything tailored to Ubuntu specifically.

I always see "make sure you have XXXX installed" or "Once you are up and running it would be a good idea to run YYYY" but no one seems to want to tell me how to install or what I am running.

The only thing I run to this day on my main system that I paid for (meaning it wasn't free...I am very anti-piracy) is Microsoft Windows. I'd very much like to get away from them but after messing around with Linux for a week or so it is easy to see just how much easier it is to get everything working.

Error messages in Windows are, generally speaking, very specific. If I don't know what it is I can Google it and usually come to a conclusion in less than 10 minutes.

Not so with Linux thus far. I see a lot of "It might be this" and "It might be that"...and this and that are totally different things. "This" might be "Your harddrive is possibly failing" while "That" could be "Sounds like your video card is conflicting with your...flux capacitor".

Oh how I love to use that term.

[Sabbatai]

Oh, by the way... Linux does have one thing over Windows..I mean at least one that I have discovered already in my short period of time using it.

Awesome users. Thank you for the encouragement so far.

[bigtomrodney]

Good luck with running again tonight. If there's only two things I would ask you to remember this early they'd be

• Never run as root (Ubuntu will cover you on that one)
• Whenever possible stick to your package manager for installing software

If you stick to those two you'll save yourself a lot of hassle. Anyway, best of luck again and pop back if you have any trouble at all. The vast majority of problems have been experienced and solved before you ever saw them

[Sabbatai]

Lol...here is an example of what I mean by tutorials that don't explain enough:

***

Now transfer these files to the system with Ubuntu installed - use a USB Flash Drive if you have to. Just get the files there.

Place them in the same folder and run the following commands in the terminal ( have the folder opened in it ). Change the * to the right text and run in the same order given below.

sudo dpkg -i ndiswrapper-common_*.deb
sudo dpkg -i ndiswrapper-utils-1.9_*.deb
sudo dpkg -i --force-depends ndisgtk_*.deb

***

Ok...so how do I "have the folder open in [the terminal]"??

And "change the * to the right text" ....and the right text would be..?!?!? I mean I can understand that maybe the right text is a location or something that would be specific to my PC..but maybe an example or something?

I have ubuntu installed on a different drive now since it seems to no longer want to work on my other drive.. despite Mepis and WinXP running fine on it. Now I am no longer able to get my wireless networking up. It worked without me even doing anything the first time. Not sure what is different now.

I'm checking some posts here on these forums and some other resources. So again I am not asking for help or I'd use the right forums. It just seems to me the tutorials are written as though I should have some knowledge already, which I do not.

[Jonathan183]

Something similar to the example you have given is on the Ubuntu website here. But a link on the same page gives more information if you are a new terminal user here. Generally speaking you will find the information you need on the Ubuntu website & it is pretty good at directing you to additional information if you need it.

Ed: I think in this case the balance is about right between giving short instructions for a more experienced user and providing links to additional information for a new user. Putting all the linked detail in the instructions would make them far too long. You may need this detail now but within a couple of weeks having all that detail in with the basic instructions would drive you mad. Don't forget you are only a new user with no experience of using Linux for a short period of time