My first day as a Linux user, read how it went.

[Nexum]

Background: I am a 22 year old Comp-Sci Major, and will be studying software engineering MSc this autumn. My main platform is a Mac running OS X, so I've been spoiled rotten by that beautiful platform. I also run a Windows machine mainly for gaming, but also for some DirectX programming that I do.

I decided to give Linux a bash on my x86 rig. Chose Fedora Core 3 as a lot of friends use it and it seems to be a large and well-community-supported distro. I have maybe 10 hours of experience in SuSE running KDE for some simple tasks like compiling C progs in gcc before this experiment, that's all. I seriously felt like I needed to get some info on Linux into my system in case I was missing anything. Read on for my appraisal of how day 1 went.

My Fedora Core experience

Installation

Ok, brand new 160GB SATA HDD in the machine, Fedora Core 3 disk one in the CDROM - let’s turn her on. Wow that install screen comes up pretty fast and looks not half bad, giving me an option of a text install or a graphical install, being the graphical junkie that I am, and wanting things to go as simply as possible I elect for the graphical install. Text whizzes by as I assume drivers are loaded. A moment later I’m asked whether I’d like to check the disk - ok, just to be sure.

These screens look less impressive, they immediately remind me of the days of installing games like Doom under DOS, I was hoping for something a little more refined, but perhaps that is still to come. The test comes back ok and disk one is given a pass, strangely it is spewed from my computer at the same time as the installer asks for it to be inserted. I put it back in.

Uh oh, no drivers found for my hard drive, it wants me to select them by hand, this could be a problem. But look - it’s found some nForce SATA drivers somehow, I select them and continue, wondering to myself why I was given that scare if there were drivers to be found anyway?

Aha, the ‘proper’ installer has loaded (Anaconda I believe) - this is much more like it, the GUI looks good and clean, and even has antialiased text - far superior to the Windows XP installation experience so far. There are helpful hints down the left hand side, and everything has a definite air of professionality about it. I click through the mandatory language and keyboard setup pages, and select a custom installation type, as I’ll be wanting to do some partitioning.

Ok now on to the Disk Partitioning Setup page - I have a choice - Automatic or using Disk Druid. I choose Disk Druid - I want some control over this process. Click ‘next’. Uh oh, an error dialog - “An error has occurred - no valid devices were found on which to create new file systems. Please check your hardware for the cause of this problem.”. Oh dear, I assume this is a problem with my SATA drive drivers? Did I not just select them properly a moment ago? Click ‘Ok’ ah... now my system has rebooted... I would have appreciated a warning.

It seems I’m back to square one - everything has started all over again. Interestingly I see the text “Loading sata_nv driver...” in front of me, surely this will work this time?

Back to the driver select screen - same as last time, but maybe I need to actually select the SATA drivers? I don’t know. I highlight the SATA drivers (the only other drivers that were found in the list were an Ethernet controller) and press Space (which it tells me at the bottom of the screen will ‘Select’) I do so, and we continue on to Anaconda again - and the same thing happens. Reboot for a second time.

Now this is the first time I have had a nice shiny SATA drive, I’m wondering whether there is something I must do before using it? Some drivers to find? I don’t know, and this time round seems to be proceeding very much as the previous two.... yeah... exactly the same.

I boot into the BIOS to see whether my new SATA drive is indeed detected. Yeah, it is, it says right there - “Internal Phy SATA 3 - Maxtor 6B160M0”. What now? I dig out my SATA drivers disk that came with my motherboard and try and boot from that. My system responds “Non-System diskette. Replace and press any key to reboot”. Was hoping that would work.

Back to the main Fedora ‘Install’ screen. This time I decide to dig around in the options. F2 - Options - “If you have a driver disk type linux dd <enter>” I do so.

It asks me for the source to find the driver disk... strangely it lists fd0 (floppy) and hdc (hard disk presumably), why can this utility find the hd, and offer to load drivers from it, and the partitioning thing complains about not having any device there at all? I continue, spirits buoyed slightly, this should work. But it doesn’t... the installer keeps asking me for a disk, obviously it can’t find anything it likes on mine. Reboot.
I really am at a loss. None of the options seem to help. I try the ‘text based install’ option in desperation. I get the same problem, uglier error boxes.

Ok, so Fedora can’t deal with my nice new HDD for some reason. Let’s try installing Windows XP first and partitioning the drive that way, maybe Fedora will approve of my drive for some reason then.

Well Windows Installer has found the drive and offered to do some things with it regarding partitioning. I have a 130GB “New (Raw)” partition (is this really all you get from a 160GB drive!?), I can either setup Windows XP on this space, or delete the partition. I can’t seem to Create a partition in this space for some reason. I don’t know what to do. Let’s try deleting it. That was the right thing to do I think. I create a 100GB partition for Windows, and let it format the partition. Why wouldn’t the Fedora installer let me get this far? I don’t know. It could be my fault somehow, some knowledge about SATA drives that I don’t have... I have a feeling installing onto an IDE drive would have been smooth as pie. It’s a shame to have this hiccup because my first impressions from the Anaconda installer were very good.

While my partition is formatted by the Windows installer, I do some Googling on the PowerBook - “fedora core sata drive install”. The results don’t inspire me with confidence, people seem to be having problems with getting FC3 to install on their SATA drives, there is a load of advice on offer, but it seems to be the ‘clutching at straws type’ fiddle-with-the-bios tips rather than any concrete answers. As always in these situations there are plenty of posts from indignant people claiming that they have the same setup and have had absolutely no problems. Great - thanks for the helpful input.

Aha, after much digging, and after formatting the drive under Windows, I try plugging my SATA drive into one of the two external SATA ports on the motherboard. This works, the Fedora installer runs, no more SATA detection problems, we’re back on track. I don’t know at whose feet this problem lies - all I can say is that the 4 year old Windows Installer had no problem with my SATA drive, and the practically new Fedora Core 3 did. Besides this, I understand that running my SATA drive from an external port will screw up any chances I may have of overclocking my machine, as the nf3 chipset will only allow you to split the FSB from the SATA controller speed on the internal (3 and 4) SATA sockets. I am not best pleased with this.

This is a problem my mother would not have been able to solve. In contrast she would have been able to install Windows or OS X on her Mac, but not been capable of installing Fedora Core. I don’t know if Fedora Core is representative of the modern Linux install process so I’m not going to make sweeping statements about Linux in its entirety - but Fedora Core 3 isn’t ready for home use. I can say this now due to this simple show-stopper.

But I’m not angry about it - the sheer number of things to choose from under the custom install has made me a happy bunny again, picking from that stuff was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to using some of the things that I’ve chosen to have installed. Besides, the Fedora Anaconda installer really is very professional - the antialiased text just sets it off. Installation finishes... computer reboots. And reboots... and reboots - every time rebooting at the nVidia RAID drivers text. Strangely the BIOS now reports that there are indeed absolutely no hard drives connected to the machine at all. I’ve had it. My new SATA drive will be Windows only - now I am angry. I set the bios to reboot from CDROM, with the Windows install CD inside.

Uh oh - strange - the same thing is happening. It’s not booting from the CDROM. I try plugging in the SATA drive into it’s old port 3 - this works, stranger and stranger.

I reboot, and for a second or two I see a Fedora screen - perhaps all is not lost afterall? It boots to the primary partition before I can fiddle however, and the Windows install continues from where I left off (after the formatting and partitioning that Fedora initially refused to do). The Windows installer looks tired, toylike, and rushed in comparison to the Anaconda installer (can you tell I like the Fedora installer yet ).

The Windows installer pops up windows which half protrude off the side of my screen (does it not know the resolution it itself chose to display in?), it does not choose to guide you from one setup page to the next rather than dump you with a window full of extraneous buttons with which to choose installation options - and the fact that only generic drivers are installed means that even things like combo-boxes perform horribly when scrolling.

With Windows installed, I decided to reboot and see if indeed Fedora was on the drive properly. To my suprise, the thing I had briefly seen at the last reboot was a Fedora OS choice menu, I had the choice of booting “Fedora Core 3” or “Other”. I chose to boot Fedora Core 3... Fedora Core 3 then chose not to boot:

“Kernel Panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!”

Great. I am a first time Linux user, with a decent rig, and I have so far had nothing but trouble in even installing and running this thing. Looking around the Fedora messageboards, I find this post:

Boot up in rescue mode. Do "chroot /mnt/sysimage". Then "wget http://www.wtamu.edu/~mlauterbach/kernel-2.6.9-1.681_FC3_SATA.root.i686.rpm". And finally, "rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.9-1.681_FC3_SATA.root.i686.rpm".

Well that sounds like fun. But i’ll give it a try. At this point I’m getting angry again at the state of Fedora and its obvious issues that seem to stem from my sata drive. I reboot into rescue mode using the Fedora disk one. I honestly can say I didn’t expect this from a modern day linux, I expected dodgy GUIs, lots of command lining, but not these huge issues with the install process. Running the Fedora CD in rescue mode, I come across the same problem as before - “No hard drives have been found, you probably need to manually choose drivers for the installation to succeed....” I know now that this isn’t something I can fix, and comes from my SATA drive being on an ‘internal’ SATA port... or something like that. From reading other’s posts I’ve come to believe this is firmly a Fedora problem with SATA drives. So I’m going to do exactly as I said above - I’m going to use my new drive solely for Windows. Fedora can go screw itself, and sit on my crap 40GB 5400rpm ATA66 drive. I don’t know how easy it will be to dual boot with this setup... but we’ll see, this is all a learning process (and so far I’ve been learning that the Fedora installer needs some work pronto).

Back to Windows installer - repartition, reformat, reinstall - another 2 hours wasted (cheers Fedora (if it is indeed your fault)).

In Linux

Well i have a look around my new desktop, I’m not sure what the bar at the bottom is doing, it seems to be some weird kind of stretched out Windows task bar. I try and play TuxRacer... uh oh, there’s a problem here, it’s super jerky even in the menu, i’ll have a look for some drivers. Off to ati.com. Great they have Linux drivers, not so great however, they want me to tell them what version of XFree86 I’m running. I don’t even know what XFree86 is, except that it is something to do with the windowing system.

ATi kindly supply a .sh file that is supposed to tell you what version you’re running, i download it (the internet is running great, this is looking good). I double click the downloaded .sh file... it opens in some text editor... hmm ok, I dig around and find Terminal, if this does the same thing as its namesake in OS X I should be ok. I find the file in Terminal and execute it. I don’t have permissions. Ok I find the file on the desktop right click and change it’s permissions to owner execute. I try running it again from Terminal, it runs, but tells me that I am not running this script from the console or do not have console ownership. Yeah... right...

I don’t know what the console is. I try running a search for it... I find loads of files, none of them help. So I do a Google “find xfree86 version” - I get a result telling me about “xdpyinfo” and I run that command in Linux.
A few pages of gunk later, I dig out the X version, which seems to be X.Org 6.8.1. Now I can download that driver from the ATi website... remember that driver? Yeah the memory is hazy for me too.

I click the download button. A webpage opens with some realplayer thing inside it... it’s obviously confused because of the extension: .rpm. But it takes me a second or two to figure this out. I manage to download it via right-click, and it gets popped onto my desktop. Great.

I double click it, and I have to authenticate - this is cool, just like OS X. It whirs a bit and then nothing. It’s disappeared and nothing is happening. Was it succesful? Did it fail? Do I need to reboot? This is horrible - I should be told the outcome of a driver installation, I’m not impressed. I’ll try Tuxracer again.
No... it’s the same. I’ll try a reboot.
This is when I realise, Linux takes quite a while to start up. Compared to Windows XP (very quick), and Mac OS X (average) Linux rates a ‘slow’ in my book. It also likes to make a song and dance about the whole thing - the more it can flash bits of drivers being loaded and lists of arcane subsystems the better.

Ok rebooted - let’s try again. No... it’s the same. I’ve had to go through all of this trouble, and it makes no difference? Are the people who are saying Linux is ready for the average consumer smoking crack?
I also can’t seem to find a setting for cranking up my nice 21” Sony Trinitron up from 75Hz to 85 Hz which is what Windows and OS X run it at. I would presume that it would be alongside the settings for colour depth and resolution... but it’s not.

Aha, more Googling, I find a guide that goes through installing ATi drivers under Redhat... and I know Fedora is a kind of sibling/offspring of redhat so I give it a go, it tells me to:
rpm -ihv fglrx_6_8_0-8.10.19-1.i386.rpm

My computer then says:
error: can’t create transaction lock

Hmm. I try again using ‘su’ to do this as root (my parents are supposed to be able to do this huh?!?).It tells me I have a package conflict. I try a second way the website suggests... this time it begins to whir, could this be it? Again, it’s popped me back to my prompt with not so much as a peep - again, terrible, terrible stuff, surely I should be told something about how the installation went? Well it appears not. I am not liking Linux, my positive thoughts about it are fading, fast.

Reading on, there are notes about these drivers not working with kernel 2.6.something... I think I have this kernel. There is a page of notes on things to download and files to tweak to get the drivers to work. I don’t want to do this, no-one should have to, I’ll give up here, I can make do with some generic drivers I suppose.

But shouldn’t this be an easy thing to do? Shouldn’t updating drivers be simple as anything? I’ve been updating graphics drivers on my Windows boxes since I bought a Voodoo 3 for my first desktop PC, and that was a simple cd-in and double click affair. Why all this hassle ten years later?

I’ve also noticed that Linux/Gnome/whatever-part-is-responsible is not very good at knowing what you’re doing with your documents... I just opened up Text Editor, saved a document to the desktop (keeping Text Editor and the document open inside it) and double-clicked on the document on the desktop... Text Editor failed to recognise that as the file it had saved just a moment ago and opened it up like it was a different file - I can imagine all sorts of concurrency issues cropping up as you work in such an environment.

But I now have to go and install a load of things on the PC, so this ends a disappointing first day using Linux. Yes - I KNOW there are reasons for all of these issues... and they might be good ones, but the simple fact remains - these things would not have happened had I been installing and using any other commercial OS such as Windows or OS X. There is a long way to come indeed.

[ladymecha]

well I myself am fresh into linux, but I had not too much trouble transition... but it depends on the package.
I made sure I did my research on the distros before I installed my choice [suse]
I didnt go for fedora core as I did read it did have the type of errors you mentioned, being weened on windows kinda makes you soft in the head... and believe me I can prove it, I am still learning how to operate this thing...
for speed I found my SUSE is lightyears faster then WinXP, except during bootup but then I understand that linux and other os's are different beasts...
but dont judge all linux on one distro, as I know certain ones are meant for certain productivities...
for linux noobs there is Mandrake and Suse
for those in the middle there is fedora
and for those who love command line for almost every function there is always Gentoo...
actually I did use Gentoo once, but for the life of me I dont know why people use it... all that command line is a drag to me.

[smindinvern]

First, before I answer your problems, why is it that you came into a linux forum to complain about linux? Firstly, the reason that your SATA didn't work well is because most hardware manufacturers don't write drivers for linux, because of the fact that to them, there is no need to, most of the world, unfortunately uses windbloze, and as a result, linux developers have to figure out how a device works and write drivers for it on their own, and this takes a while, though I bet you that the next release of Fedora _will_ have support for your SATA card . Secondly, ATI's linux support sucks, even the windoze drivers are crap. I would recommend that in the future, you read the directions when trying to install something, but for the time being, use these ones, if you really want to use the ATI drivers: copy the ATI rpm to /root/Desktop, then login as root and open a terminal - Alt+F2, then:

cd /root/Desktop
rpm -ivh fglrx*.rpm

follow the instructions, you may also want to back up your old xorg.conf file:

rename xorg.conf xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf

the ATI drivers suck, so if they don't work, you'll want to restore this file. Once the installation is complete, do Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart the X server, your new drivers should take effect. Many things in linux do require direct intervention by the administrator, because of complications caused by new or stubborn hardware, but there is _always_ a way around this, which is one of the things that makes linux so wonderful. I would suggest however that you do some research next time before going somewhere to complain about linux when you could just nicely ask to get your problem fixed

[Nexum]

First, before I answer your problems, why is it that you came into a linux forum to complain about linux?

Please don't see the above as just some kind of one-way rant. I was hoping that a completely fresh view on the 'first-day' of Linux from someone who is /not/ computer illiterate may help focus the people who are in charge of steering its development in the right direction.

It's meant as 'feedback' - 'constructive criticism' whatever you want to call it. I know as well as anyone there are a ridiculous whole bunch of things that Linux does better than any OS out there. Maybe by expressing the things that I did find lacking will be helpful to other users, as well as those who choose to work on Linux.

No project can move forward without a frank and critical look at its flaws, and then subsequently addressing them.[/i]

[eerok]

Well, a bad installation experience isn't that rare with linux, and smindinvern made some good points toward explaining why. Some newer hardware can present problems. When I bought my new box a year ago, I rejected sata simply because it's wise to avoid new technologies like this when you intend to install a *nix. I still ended up disappointed when I discovered that freebsd (my favorite *nix) disliked my chipset enough to refuse to write partition tables. Definitely a show-stopper.

But here's my main point: I moved on. I installed netbsd, which went on just fine. Then, since I'm doing a lot of coding for the web, I thought "why emulate linux in order to get java/pdf/flash running?" and I returned to linux.

First I tried debian stable again -- but it was "woody," the same release that I was using 3 years ago! Then, to make a long story shorter, I tried several other distros before deciding on gentoo, which I like a lot despite it being source-based.

Really all it takes is a good experience to put the bad ones in perspective. Once you build a system you like, you realize it was worth the fuss and the false starts. At least, that's how it works for me.

What I'm saying here is that it's a bit early for you to be decidng anything much about linux. Keep at it and good luck.

[smindinvern]

I didn't write that post out of anger or mean-spirit, I'm just pointing out that there are reasonable explanations for all of your problems, and that it may be wise to simply ask rather than making a big deal out of it in the future . You do make a good point that hardware is a problem, but unfortunately, most companies don't readily share their hardware design with us like they do with windbloze. If you are having problems though, you've come to the right place, we're always here to help. You can probably find some good drivers for that card on the net by now, as FC3 is a little bit dated.

[adrenaline]

I didn't write that post out of anger or mean-spirit, I'm just pointing out that there are reasonable explanations for all of your problems, and that it may be wise to simply ask rather than making a big deal out of it in the future . You do make a good point that hardware is a problem, but unfortunately, most companies don't readily share their hardware design with us like they do with windbloze. If you are having problems though, you've come to the right place, we're always here to help. You can probably find some good drivers for that card on the net by now, as FC3 is a little bit dated.

I think smindinvern said it best. I just want to add a little non-mean spirited editorial.
I just want to point out while driver stuff is a little primitive and installing can be a little trying at times, once you have it in and going it is the most stable OS I have found yet. (Linux)
I feel windows is buggy and how does a company give you a free media player but doesn't offer virus protection and spyware protection for free? Media player does you no good if you have a virus.
I think that windows stalls and crashes all the time, so now it is the norm. People accept it without complaining. Then they try Linux and complain about that. Try to keep an open mind and remember that Linux is Linux and not a Windows replacement. No need to try to compare. Lastly even if Linux wasn't as good as Windows *biting my tongue here* Linux is free why complain?

Try Linux if it is not your bag than go back to windows, but there are literally thousands of us here at this forum that think that Linux and BSD are good so something has to be working.

Remember Linux isn't hard, it is different, and there is a learning curve.

[sealfood]

Nexum: if you have stopped being shell shocked then firstly, most of us Linux users have had at some time problems with distros that won't install properly, if at all, and secondly, the advice you've been given is right: you have to find a distro that suits you and and your PC. That search can actually be quite fun.

Two distros that are usually very easy to install are Linspire and Xandros. I have no experience of Linspire but it is supposed to be a doddle to install. I've only tried version 2 of Xandros and that was very easy. I 've had no real trouble installing Mandrake, Conectiva and Mepis and I'm using Conectiva now.

So far I've not been able to install Ubuntu (the installer just kept repeating itself-even I give up after seeing the same routines after two hours) nor Vector BUT other people have managed perfectly all right. It really is sometimes just a matter of trial and error.

Linux really is a great OS. I don't worry about defragmenting a hard drive, because I don't have to and the OS is a lot more secure.

[eerok]

It might be worth stating the obvious here: the term "linux" is nonspecific enough to be almost useless. There are huge variances between distros; for example, compare LFS with ubuntu ...

Even within the same distro, problems the gnome/kde users have will often be incomprehensible to, say, the fluxbox user.

The huge range of choices offered by linux (which is after all only a kernel) makes general statements about linux pretty much meaningless. When I hear something like "linux boots slower than xp" or "linux is hard to install" I just shrug.

Some distros go on like jam. Sometimes your hardware makes a big difference. Sometimes you have to know what you're doing.

Anyway, I agree that the key to a good linux experience is to find the distro that appeals to you, and the usual way to proceed with that is by trial and error.

Stating the obvious again: "trial and error" implies that you may encounter errors along the way, heh.

[sealfood]

Unfortunately the initial experiences that many first time users have of a Linux distro is an error filled one! Don't misunderstand that comment: sometimes success occurs simply by good luck. I would be inclined to say I've been very fortunate but actually, with absolutely no research at all to back up this feeling, I think that most Linux newbies are succesful because otherwise this forum and all the other linux forums would be chocked by complaints and they are not.