Yay, 8.10 works!! (mostly)

[Objekt]

Rarely do I find the extravagance of 2 exclamation points necessary, but I'm just so damn happy that 8.10 WORKS on my system.

I had serious problems before. Nothing newer than 7.04/7.10 would even boot into the Live version of the OS, much less complete the install process. This applied for both 32- and 64-bit versions. Attempting to simply boot the live CD or DVD would result in a bunch of error messages and ultimately getting left at a command prompt.

Clearly, whatever it was in the 8.x versions that made it not compatible with my hardware has been cleared up. FWIW, here's a list of my hardware:

Asus P5E3 WS Pro motherboard (intel x38 chipset)
Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo CPU, 3.15GHz
4 GB DDR3 PC310666 RAM
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1 TB SATA 2.0 hard drive
Lite-On 20x DVD/CD RW PATA drive
Samsung 3.5" diskette drive
XTX GeForce 9800 GTX "Black Edition" video card
21" NEC AccuSync 120 CRT monitor

Oh, also KDE 4 looks nice. Very pretty. It even set my display to a reasonable resolution (1280x1024) and refresh rate (85Hz) right away, and I was able to crank it up to 1600x1200 @ 75Hz without Xserver going haywire. Once I get 8.10 installed, I'm going to try to install drivers specific to my video hardware so I can do 3D.

I'm posting from within the live 8.10 environment now. Way to go, Kubuntu devs!

Update: Install from within the live environment did not work - I got an error message claiming there was something wrong with the install CD. That wasn't the case, as I verified the MD5 sum of the downloaded image, burned slow at 4x, and ran the Live CD's "verify disc" procedure, which found no errors. So I have no idea why it was saying that. Anyway, installing from the "Install Kubuntu" menu item after booting the live CD worked. I now have a healthy 8.10 install and can also boot in Windows when necessary.

[kevinc]

Re: Yay, 8.10 works!!

Great to know that the install works from the menu at least, if not from within the live environment (desktop icon?)

Maybe this post should be in installation instead of hardware?

I have an older (two years) system and used the alternate image to burn a CD with K3B.
Ibex had no problems finding my bluetooth, IR, USB devices, ATI x1300 video, keyboard, wireless, LAN, SD card reader, both batteries and processors with control of cpu frequency. I'm not that surprised as Hardy also did the same although the previous versions did have some difficulty and required lots of time to get working.

[toad]

Re: Yay, 8.10 works!!

And I was pleasantly shocked when my multimedia keyboard simply started working

Fantastic!

[Objekt]

Re: Yay, 8.10 works!!

8.10 initially displayed an icon in the system tray, saying something about installing proper drivers for my GeForce video card. I tried to do it, but I don't think it worked. How would I check whether the proper drivers are installed?

[dibl]

Re: Yay, 8.10 works!!

Try Alt-F2 "nvidia-settings" with no quote marks. If a nice green and black utility pops open and lets you set the configuration, you're all set. But prolly not.

I far prefer using EnvyNG to install the Nvidia proprietary driver, personally -- I've gotten the kde-jockey thing to work twice, maybe, out of a dozen attempts.

[assettt]

Re: Yay, 8.10 works!!

Rarely do I find the extravagance of 2 exclamation points necessary, but I'm just so damn happy that 8.10 WORKS on my system.

I had serious problems before. Nothing newer than 7.04/7.10 would even boot into the Live version of the OS, much less complete the install process. This applied for both 32- and 64-bit versions. Attempting to simply boot the live CD or DVD would result in a bunch of error messages and ultimately getting left at a command prompt.

Clearly, whatever it was in the 8.x versions that made it not compatible with my hardware has been cleared up. FWIW, here's a list of my hardware:

Asus P5E3 WS Pro motherboard (intel x38 chipset)
Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo CPU, 3.15GHz
4 GB DDR3 PC310666 RAM
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1 TB SATA 2.0 hard drive
Lite-On 20x DVD/CD RW PATA drive
Samsung 3.5" diskette drive
XTX GeForce 9800 GTX "Black Edition" video card
21" NEC AccuSync 120 CRT monitor

Oh, also KDE 4 looks nice. Very pretty. It even set my display to a reasonable resolution (1280x1024) and refresh rate (85Hz) right away, and I was able to crank it up to 1600x1200 @ 75Hz without Xserver going haywire. Once I get 8.10 installed, I'm going to try to install drivers specific to my video hardware so I can do 3D.

I'm posting from within the live 8.10 environment now. Way to go, Kubuntu devs!

Update: Install from within the live environment did not work - I got an error message claiming there was something wrong with the install CD. That wasn't the case, as I verified the MD5 sum of the downloaded image, burned slow at 4x, and ran the Live CD's "verify disc" procedure, which found no errors. So I have no idea why it was saying that. Anyway, installing from the "Install Kubuntu" menu item after booting the live CD worked. I now have a healthy 8.10 install and can also boot in Windows when necessary.

What video drivers do you need for your card. My 8.10 installation used nvidia 177.80 for my 8800 gt (ok, not a patch on the 9800 gtx) which I think are the latest for the card. 3D works great and with coolbits enabled I've cranked up the speed by a safe 15%. Yay 8.10 rocks.

[Objekt]

Re: Yay, 8.10 works!!

Shortly after posting the above, I found one of Dibl's excellent HOWTO's on installing the NVidia drivers. I got the 177.80 drivers installed & tested them with a simple 3D game from the repository. I can't remember the name of the game, but it involves tilting a surface to roll a ball through targets within a time limit - sort of an inverse Marble Madness.

When I left for work this morning, the Urban Terror 4.1 Linux client was downloading. I look forward to playing it under Kubuntu 8.10 later today. I've been playing the Windows version for a few weeks and it's a blast. As it's based on the open-sourced version of the Quake 3 game engine, the system requirements for UT are not terribly high.

There are at least two other high-quality 3D shooter games that have Linux clients available, Elite Force and Tremulous. Maybe I should start a thread about this in the Software section.

[dibl]

Re: Yay, 8.10 works!!

Kewel.

Do you know how to overclock it, by putting the "Coolbits" option into your "screen" stanza of xorg.conf? Here's mine:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen0"
    Device    "Device0"
    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    Option  "PixmapCacheSize" "5000000"
    Option  "AllowSHMPixmaps" "0"   
    Option    "metamodes" "1600x1200 +0+0"
    Option    "Coolbits" "1"       
    DefaultDepth  24            
    SubSection "Display"           
        Depth   24          
    EndSubSection               
EndSection

That will enable the overclocking option in the nvidia-settings utility, provided you slide the little "Legal Terms and Conditions" slider all the way down and "accept" their escape from warranty claims for damage.

But don't go more than 15% over the default settings, unless you've got another Nvidia card ready to install.

I'm chicken -- I stick to 10%.