A new user's first impression

[idofxeno]

I've tried using linux in stints over the past 6 or 7 years, but never really got too involved with it. I'd say the most I ever used it for was compiling insignificant C++ code when a friend of mine made me a shell account to play with back in highschool. In any case, I had recently decided to learn how to be proficient in linux, from simple shell programing and alias creation on to more advanced things that, quite honestly, I probably don't even know exist yet.

Over the past month, I have pretty much done non-stop reading about linux in order to enhance my understanding of how it works and how to be proficient with it (I even bought Chris Negus' 2010 Linux Bible). There is really a wealth of information out there on the internet and in books as well with regard to linux and how to utilize what it offers effectively.

The problem for me if I had to guess, begins in my choice of distribution. Back in the old days when I messed around I used slackware, however I was never able to successfully get X going even with superprobe due to some problem with my videocard. Anyway, this time I decided I would go with Debian (lenny). I burned the DVDs, formatted my harddrive, installed all the packages, and got X running in no time. So far, so good. The problem became clear to me shortly afterwards however. I was stuck in 800x600, so I decided to download the nvidia drivers and install them in order to get my resolution up. I was presented with a .run file. Obviously I had no idea how to actually use a .run file, so I looked it up.... './nvidiainstallername'. Easy, so I type it in. Doesn't work. I have an X server still going. So then I have to lookup how to shutdown an X server... /etc/init.d/gdm stop. Doesn't work at first for some reason, so I shutdown -r now and try again by ctrl-alt-f1'ing and trying again, successfully. I try the installation again, and I get some cryptic error about my gcc version being different than the one used to compile my kernel or something (at least I think that is what it was). So after doing some searching, I find out you can have multiple versions of gcc installed for this very reason. So I install 4.1 or whatever it called for and it still didn't work. So I plugged the error message in and started reading. The answer ended up being some extremely convoluted command that really kind of a reality check to me that I had no idea what I was doing here (CC=gcc4.1 and then another host of arguments to the installer). After this, I received another error which basically said I didn't have 'make' installed. To try and keep this as short as possible, this cycle continued for quite awhile until FINALLY I was able to get them installed.

Now when I installed Debian, I made sure to include all the packages that came with the 5 DVD installation. I find it very discouraging that even while including ALL of those packages, it still wasn't even remotely enough of what I needed to install simple video drivers (module, whatever its called, came from windows like most others so :\). I've run into this problem with several other utilities that I have tried to install as well, and a lot of them require libraries that are not downloadable via aptitude (zlib, libnet, etc.) or rather, perhaps they are, but under a different name... to be honest I simply don't know.

I guess my question is this: What is the problem for me here? Is it a bad choice of distribution? I realize I'm quite inexperienced, but is it honestly this much trouble for everyone starting out? How do I find a list of the most popular libraries that I need and where I can get them all (ones not provided by apt)? I really like some of the features that linux has, and I'd like to be able to continue learning, but it is a little bit discouraging to run into one problem after another with no end in sight. Is all of this normal or is it just me? Thanks for reading.

[Kieren]

While Debian is certainly a better choice than Slackware if you are starting out I would say go a step further and check out Ubuntu (Or Kubuntu if you prefer KDE) or even go a step further and install Linux Mint.

Ubuntu is a distribution that branched off from Debian so they are very similar in some ways (for example they both use the same package manager) but is some what more usable for new users who just want to get going.

Mint is a branch off from Ubuntu and the main difference here is that it includes none free software by default such as support for MP3, Flash and Java.

Both Ubuntu and Mint will let you install drivers for most NVIDIA cards without having to compile from source. When I install Kubuntu I get a pop up asking me which version of driver I want to install, if any.

As with all things its going to take some time to learn how to use Linux but as is often pointed out if you used Linux your whole life and switched over to Windows you would have the similar problems. The method of installing and updating software in Windows seems mad to the Linux community but the package manager can cause so much grief for users switching to Linux for the first time. Stick with it, it does get easier

[rokytnji]

[QUOTE]What is the problem for me here?[/QUOTE

]I agree with Kieren on this recommendation. Some folks coming from a Windows mindset. Think they are profiecient with computers. And instead of wading in the shallow pool first. Dive off into the deep and. And in turn. When something goes wrong or a problem arises. Their tried and true methods using Windows procedures. Fails. And they start to drown.

Kieren has advised some good starter distros that are just as full featured as Debian. They just make it a bit easier to interact with for the new Linux user.

After you get some time in with these distros. You will find you will be able to interpet terminal error messages better. And find missing dependencies for a certain application or function.

Now I like Debian so don't get me wrong with my above recommends and statements. I just think that Linux Mint is easier for some new users.

[devils casper]

I agree with Kieren and rokytnji. I owuld suggest you to check the link in my signature.
Ubuntu, Linux Mint and a few other distros are new user friendly and installation is very easy.

[idofxeno]

I appreciate you all taking the time out to reply to my thread. I'm definitely still a little windows minded when it comes to Linux, but I definitely feel a lot more comfortable using it now than I did a month ago. I'll check out Ubuntu since it seems to be highly recommended for newer users (truth be told, I had narrowed my choice down between Ubuntu and Debian, coin flip picked for me though :X). Thanks for the recommendations everyone.

(oh yeah, the other problem I was having installing those drivers had to do with me not having the Linux headers installed... I guess at least now I know :P)

[GNU-Fan]

You mentioned that you had problems to get certain libraries installed.
This is the recommended approach: (I show for Debian, but Ubuntu should be very similar)

You visit to
Debian -- Packages
and go to the section
"Search package directories".

There you select Distribution "Stable" (which is Lenny).
And as keyword you type "zlib" for example.

Then you will be presented a list of possible hits. This tells you what exact name the package has, how to get in touch with the responsible developers, where to file bugs etc.

Often there are three versions of a given package available.
xzy, xyz-dbg and xyz-dev

The first one is the one you need if you simply wish to make the functionality of the package available. This is what you usually want. But usually you don't install libraries manually. Instead you install a certain program and the package manager chooses the correct necessary libraries automatically.

The second one gives extended information during crashes etc. Useful for developers.

The third one you need if you want to develop or build you own applications which employ the functions of that library. For example the "Linux headers", which are necessary for the third party display driver you wish to use.

[reed9]

While Debian is slightly more advanced than Linux Mint or Ubuntu, it is fine.

Whichever distro you use, take advantage of their documentation. The great thing about Debian and Ubuntu is the wealth of online guides and documentation out there.

Generally, if I'm going about something I don't know yet, I start with a simple google search. For example, "debian nvidia" returns exactly what you need on the first hit.
debian nvidia - Google Search

To distill the guide down to the basics.
1) the nvidia drivers are non-free, so enable contrib and non-free in your sources list. (nano is a console text editor, replace with the text editor of your choice.)

su -c 'nano /etc/apt/sources.list'

You'll see lines like this

###### Debian Main Repos
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main

Change to this (changes in bold)

###### Debian Main Repos
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

Update

su -
apt-get update

Do

su -
apt-get install nvidia-kernel${VERSION}-$(uname -r)
apt-get install nvidia-glx${VERSION}
apt-get install nvidia-xconfig
nvidia-xconfig

Exit and restart your session or just reboot.

The bigger issue is sadly that full support for nvidia cards requires a proprietary non-free driver. Fortunately, there is a reversed engineered driver being worked on, nouveau, which will be the default driver in most distros soon. The main downside with the choice of Debian here, is that in the interests of stability, they use older software than an Ubuntu or Fedora. The nouveau driver is currently only available in Debian's experimental branch.

[Rubberman]

All of these posts are solid. I agree with rokytnji about the "going off the deep end" tendency for many experienced Windows users switching to Linux. I did something like that myself on my first real Linux system - installing Gentoo on my old Dell XPS-R450 system some years ago. It took me about 2-3 weeks of evenings and weekends of solid effort before I had a reasonably functional system. Since then I have installed and used a number of other distributions on various workstations and laptops, some being easier to install and configure than others. My recommendation now? Never lose sight of the KISS principal! Start simple and move slowly from there.

When I got my new/current workstation 2 years ago and decided that it would ONLY run an enterprise class Linux operating systems except in a virtual machine, I did some research and decided on CentOS 5. My system is a high-end dual quad-core system w/ Intel mobo, 8GB RAM, nVidia 8800GT graphics, SATA drives, dual IDE DVD recorders, and dual HD flatpanel LCD displays. I knew that I would not be able to get all of the functionality "out-of-the-box", but I would work thru my "need-to-have" list one item at a time until I got the system running like I needed it. It also had to run in 64-bit mode to get full use out of the E5450 procesors and 8GB of RAM I had.

First item? Graphics good enough for full-motion full-screen video. The default vesa graphics driver was deficient in two areas. One was that it would not support the full 1920x1200 resolution of the display(s). The other was that it didn't handle full-motion video well. Solution? Install the proprietary nVidia driver. To do that (as you discovered) you need to shut down the X server. With CentOS you change to runlevel 3 (easy enough), login as root, run the script, and start the X server to test it out. Everything was fine, so I switched back to runlevel 5 and rebooted. Still fine. That dealt with the full-motion full-screen video problems. Continuing on I enabled the second monitor, and then started working thru the rest of my list. One thing I found out when installing the nVidia drivers - they don't support the Xen-enabled kernels and I originally configured Xen for my virtual machine manager. So, I found Sun's VirtualBox (after a lot of research and trial&error), removed Xen, and got the nVidia driver installed.

Things that took some research and more time? Getting reliable DVD and CD recording, ripping, and authoring. Figuring out what applications I could most effectively use for scheduling, syncing my Palm Pilot, office tasks, accounting, software development (my profession), etc. All of these things have been dealt with except for DVD video authoring for which I use a Windows program I had purchased a long time ago, but works well with Wine.

All in all, it took a couple of months before I had the system pretty much to where I wanted it, and as it stands today. I run Windows XP, Solaris, QNX and other Linux distributions in virtual machines on one screen, and use the other for most of my other tasks. The desktop and panels are configured as I like them and pretty much the entire system is what I envisioned it when I built it.

One interesting hardware glitch. Even though both DVD recorders are supposed to be identical (they aren't), one (the master) does CD recording without any problems, and the other (slave) does DVD recording without problems. However, why I try to use the slave device for CD recording, it cannot calibrate the laser power settings correctly. So, I burn CDs on one, and DVDs on the other. Playback doesn't seem to care which is which.

Final analysis? I will never go back to Windows as my primary system, and only use it when I have no other recourse, or to port applications to the Windows environment. I run Ubuntu 9.04 on my two laptops and found that it handles the wireless and webcam hardware better than Windows does - no drivers or configuration needed for WiFi, bluetooth, or cameras.

[idofxeno]

It is somewhat comforting to know that the troubles I have had so far seem to simply be growing pains more so than anything. I guess for me the problem has mainly been the "windows" mindset, expecting things to just work without having to think about anything.

GNU-Fan: That is exactly what I was looking for I think. I was relying on aptitude's search option to find the libraries that I needed, but for one reason or another it was never able to. I would surmise that it has something to do with the sources.list that reed9 referenced in his post, I'll do some reading up on it to make sure.

This weekend I'm going to go ahead and acquire Mint and Ubuntu and try them both out to see how I like them. Thanks all for the replies.