Linux Issues and Questions

[Gruelius]

Hi everyone,
After hoping for Vista to be more secure, fast and cheap to be utterly dissapointed ive decided im going to go use linux with XP in a VM for the occasional thing.

Ive chosen Ubuntu 6.06 upgraded to 6.10 (Dont move to ubuntu section, thread contains general noob questions)

My hardware is as follows:
AMD 64 3000+ @2.2ghz
1GB DDR400 @ 220mhz
FX5200 128mb (Changeable fora X800pro 256mb in the future hopefully)
- has the new drivers that dont use GLX or whatever it is.
200GB IDE HDD
Pioneer DVR 111D

Anyway the software setup i have is fairly basic. At the moment i have a stock ubuntu install with Nvu + MP3/DVD codecs installed.

Questions: General

Is linux the best option for me compared to XP?
Im not interested in gaming on PC at all, the occasional flash game maybe but that would be it. Im using linux over XP because i just guess that it has less of a overhead with cpu usage + ram usage. Is this right? or would it just depend on which distro i use, i heard Gentoo is for the real power users.

Microsoft Fonts
How can i get Ubuntu fonts to look a bit sharper/get microsoft fonts? Someone told me the fonts are antialiased and other things like that, id like to get to the bottom of this.

[B]How do i get widgets like these[b]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0Ztc...elated&search=

Is there a better alternative Gnome file system browser
If such things exist lol

OS for a pure File/Print Server
If i have a basic fileserver, which will soon have raid5, share files, backup files onto DVD (non auto) and share a printer (tux drivers exist), is it best to use XP Sp2 or Linux? This is not an issue for value of money as i allready have lisences for free. I also need to connect to it via a VNC terminal or whatever is the tux standard, if i can use the web to check the files. Im only thinking of linux because i need it to be fast enough to share HD files over the network.

How do i compile software from a source?
Dont have any specific apps just curious

Do apps under wine run slower than native Linux apps?

VM questions
I usually flash phones for people and the software i use is windows only i think, or i guess. If i run XP in a VM can it detect/use usb devices unknown to linux?

Gnome VS Kde
Which one is better? Im using Beryl at the moment incase its a problem. I find file browsing a bit slow if thats a gnome thing but meh. Can i run KDE apps under gnome?

Question: Display

How to get a bottom bar like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0JKL...elated&search=
In the 2nd desktop that bottom bar, how do i get one

50hz isssues
My two LCD's are setup by dualview as one 2056*1280 monitor or whatever it is at 50hz. I would like 75hz, i had a look thru xorg.conf and added a modeline to monitor however it still wont let me select anything but 65hz

Beryl 3D settings
Anyone got some good Beryl Settings they would lend me? (not themes)

Resizing windows
When i try to resize windows (drag top up and down) it looks very choppy with or without beryl + the 3d enabled. Any easy fixes?

Increase Bar menu size
Is it possible to increase the bar height/run the bar across two monitors? I want to keep the divisions between the two monitors so apps only fulscreen to one monitor tho


Questions: Software

DVD Ripper
All the rippers ive found have all been transcoders too, i just want an app alike DVD shrink or DVD decryptor.

Can i run office 2007 under wine or is it VM only?
Openoffice wouldnt open my 2003 Access database so might aswell get the latest n greatest

I need a music player with a libary like winamp
If it canalso sync to Music players (MTP players or Ipods e.t.c.) that would be great. I would also like visualisations, i just love winamp so much, running it on tux with wine or something would be fantastic and quite funny, call it linamp or something.

Is there a list of reccomended programs for base install + other things?
Im not looking for a Win-lin comparison thing im looking for the essentials + nice things i guess.

Video Players + Decoders
Which are the best at the moment? i am happy with the program that came with ubuntu, forgot the name.

Questions: Misc

Hardware DVD decoding
My card supports Dxva, are there any linux equivelants? noticed DVD playback in totem to slow down a bit sometimes + i could see lines being drawn (probably hz issue)

Mounting Things
Is it easy to mount a directory as a disk in media for example?





Yeah, thats about it for questions at the moment lol heh
All help will be appriciated
Julius

[Roxoff]

Blimey, just a couple of questions then? Ok, I'll have a stab at some of these...

Yes. I think Linux is the best option for you. Just as I think you like chocolate chip ice cream, prefer coffee to tea and you just love kentucky bourbon rather than Jameson's. Or maybe you could make your own mind up which flavour you'd prefer? Oh, and if you're a real power-user, you'll use Slackware, but it's not for the faint hearted.

Microsoft Fonts - there is a sourceforge project for this, you're going to have to google for it, I'm afraid, as I cant remember the name of the project, and I've still got a lot of typing todo.

Wigets? That's just Beryl, get it configured right and you can have all that. It's only eye candy though.

Alternative file browsers? Yep, open your package manager and take a look. The beauty of Linux is choice. You could start off with Konqueror (the kde one) and work your way out from there.

OS for file and print server. That's easy. You need Windows Server... Only kidding. Go for a lightweight or server-based distribution. There are several, take a look on www.distrowatch.com.

Building from source? Download the tarball of the source (usually *.tar.gz or .tgz or *.tar.bz2) and unpack it with 'tar -xfvz <filename>' (for .gz or .tgz) or tar -xvfj <filename>' (for .bz2). Inside the directory it creates is usually a file called README which contains instructions for how to start. The general process is './configure' followed by 'make' then 'make install' in the directory.

Apps normally run slower under Wine as there is the extra processing of the emulation layer to take into account. If your pc is fast enough, you wont notice it though.

VM? Dunno about USB support. Check the tech specs for VMware on their product pages.

Gnome vs KDE. The best one is BOTH. They're both better than windows - no contest. You can use them both, and pick which you want to use at logon time. And you could try XFCE and others too...

Bottom bar? It's beryl again, she gets everywhere. Get it configured right and you'll get all that lovely eye candy.

50Hz? What are you worried about? You have an LCD - the refresh rate is irrelevant. It's a problem on CRT's because the screen degrades, and you get flicker, so the faster it's updated the better. On LCD's you dont get this problem. Personally I'd rather have the screen update at the instant a pixel updates, rather than by scanning down - but we're tied to this old CRT technology. Stop worrying about it, the refresh rate doesn't matter for LCDs.

Beryl 3D? I dont use beryl, I got the other one (the name of which escapes me at the moment) but I'm sure someone can help you configure it. Maybe you should make a thread asking just the question you want answered?

Resizing windows - if it's choppy then you might need to get the latest video drivers for your card. The only other suggestions I can make are either a new faster video card or a faster computer.

Menu bar size? Instead of stretching your bar, you might want to add another bar to the other monitor. Take a look in the menu for gnome or KDE configuration options for the menu. They're in there somewhere, but the location of them differs between distros (and I'm not familiar with Ubuntu to that degree).

DVD Ripper? Use DVD::Rip. It's the dogs danglies.

Office 2007? Dont bother. Use OpenOffice.org - it's compatible with windows and Linux and the native files it saves can be as little at 10% of the size of MSOffice equivalents.

Video players? You've got Xine, MPlayer, Kaffeine? There are others too. Extra codecs are available on the mplayer download page, these are compatible with xine too.

HW DVD Decoding? I dont know how to work this in Linux, but I've never had a playback problem. Maybe it's a problem with your video drives, as you said above.

Mounting? You can either mount a disk (see 'man mount' for details) or you can mount a .iso disk image file as a filesystem, or you can create symbolic links to other places in the filesystem (see 'man ln').

HTH

[mr.peanut]

VM questions
I usually flash phones for people and the software i use is windows only i think, or i guess. If i run XP in a VM can it detect/use usb devices unknown to linux?

I started a thread about this but it got no response. Nevertheless, after a bit of googling I came across this page. It seems you can have up to 2 USB devices on the client OS, and the host doesnt need the drivers for them - which is good news.

The bad news is this..

Modems and certain streaming data devices, such as speakers and Web cams, do not work properly.

I'm guessing USB phone's would probably come under 'streaming'. Skype calls are bad enough as they are, without added technical mis-haps. I might take the plunge sometime this week and see how I get on. I'll let you know of my success/failure. Then again I might just get lazy and stick with windows :P

[Gruelius]

Thanks for the repsonses all. Im meant to be out the door so i will keep it short and sweet

How can i check my drivers? im pretty sure im running the latest AIGLX nvidia version. I feel its related to refresh rate as the tearing is like within a game with vsync off.

When i was trying to install DVD::Rip from source i had issues finding the packages. Do i just google them and install them if apt-get cant find them? what are some large repositories containing lots of things? also i dont think i have the packages for make i think.

I dont think my phone would appear to be a streaming device, when i modify it its just like a usb pretty much. I wouldnt risk flashing it tho, keeping dualboot. lol

[Gruelius]

Going back to windows,

Ive determined linux ultimately is a faster and much more secure OS, however i just cant get it to run how i want it and thats just whats annoying me. The resizing of windows and tearing of dvd's just stinks.

Anyways thanks for the time
Julius

[Thrillhouse]

Microsoft Fonts - there is a sourceforge project for this, you're going to have to google for it, I'm afraid, as I cant remember the name of the project, and I've still got a lot of typing todo.

I believe it's called msttcorefonts. You can install it with apt-get if you enable the multiverse repository, which I'll get to a little later.

When i was trying to install DVD::Rip from source i had issues finding the packages. Do i just google them and install them if apt-get cant find them? what are some large repositories containing lots of things?

Check this link for installing DVD::Rip on Ubuntu. Or, if you enable the multiverse repository in apt-get, you should be able to install it with

$sudo apt-get install dvdrip

For more information on apt-get and the usage of repositories, look here.

also i dont think i have the packages for make i think.

Try executing this command:

$sudo apt-get install build-essential

Along with make, that will give you some other necessary development tools.

Hang in there with Linux. It seems tough at first, especially for somebody fresh off of Windows but if you give it some time and allow the people here to help you out with the other problems that I can't solve, I think you'll find it worth your time. Also, posting any error messages you get when trying to accomplish some task would be a big help.

[Gruelius]

haha im willing to give linux a second chance :P

After resizing my windows in windows over and over it looks good however cpu usage goes to 100% just like in Linux. I think i will set it to inline fill or something, that seemed to work.

In my opinion the reason why i dont like linux is the general feel. The fonts are far too soft, all the corners are too soft e.t.c.

For example entering this text (Say cheese) it is nice and sharp and defined, easy to read. In linux its soft and horrible!


Another thing i noticed was that double clicking on a folder, it takes 2 seconds for a network share before the manager pops up and about 1 second FOR A LOCAL FOLDER! Can someone give me an idea there?

I tried XFCE but i still liked gnome a bit better.

anyway ive got year 12 studies atm so ill let you guys do the thinking