one more linux user

[Jonas]

Hi

Yesterday I converted a friend into using Linux (i.e installed). How much I'd love anyone to start using a Linux OS, I hate to push it down their throat (even if maaany actually would need it ). Far to many think that they never could "learn" Libre Office so they "just have to have MS office" - same goes with Photoshop etc. It sometimes feel that I'm arguing with a 5 year old child who doesn't like this and that food they've never tried, most who wouldn't taste the difference between Libre and M$.

Anyway this friend asked me to get rid of his windows installation (actually for ethical reasons) and convert one of his 3 boxes to Linux, to start with. Easy enough I thought. I downloaded several distributions, Chakra, Kubuntu, LinuxMint, Netrunner, all 64 bit the latest and the greatest. He have a Acer Aspire M5100 (64 bit CPU with a Win 32 bit installed). I thought Mint would be a good distro to start with, and thought I'd promote Kubuntu as a KDE distro with Mint being either Cinnamon or Mate, side by side - Gnome OS and KDE OS.

Even though I find myself competent to wipe and install a OS of any kind I've never - ever - had so much trouble before.

First started with Mint 13 cinnamon on a USB, testing the "CD" gave me rows of rows of flickering text that stated that there was a read error on the disk - ok, a coaster I thought. reinstalled the USB - same thing. Testing Kubuntu the same thing. Then I started to think there was some major issue with his hardware, even though Windows ran like a charm still. A simple job took to long and I had to go. The day after, geared with 32 bit distros I gave it another go, now on CD/DVDs. Mint booted but could not set up the screen, all CLI. I wasn't sure I wanted to hazzle with command install and chop up his harddrive with CLI tools. So I gave Kubuntu a spin from a CD. It booted - "at last!! good 'ol Kubuntu!" Still, I didn't want to install a 32 bit on a 64 bit CPU, so retried with 64 bit Kubuntu - and installer crashed over and over, a new burned CD, MD5 checked and rechecked CDs.

I searched the net and didn't find any trouble (as with prior Kubuntu installer crash bugs) on 12.04. It had to be a hardware issue, it never occurred to me that a Desktop box would have a onboard GPU, this one had a radeon X1250 onboard GPU. These 2 days almost drove me nuts trying to figure out what didn't work, I almost started to question the belief in my sign ...it felt like there was a daemon struggling through my "exorcism" ...or some star coalition that was in junction with the laws of propriety.

By the time I had installed Kubuntu 32 bit on a HDD un-partitioned, I had to leave. At least he's on Kubuntu now (that he thinks looks ugly because it looks "fancy" lol, I said I could make it all CLI if he wanted to ...and he said he wouldn't mind that if he'd known the commands ).

Still not sure why this hardware didn't accept the 64 bit - due to the onboard GPU? or why the vesa drivers didn't work on Mint? ....Guess there's quite a lot more to learn for me still

I will split he's HDD and let him try something else beside Kubuntu/KDE, and it'll give me some time to research the GPU onboard functionality and see Mint in action (I don't want it on my boxes due to Mono dependencies) .. and hopefully I'll stare that daemon straight in the face and drive him out - "(Bill) Gatan - I command you - by the powers of the GPL - leave this piece of free hardware!"

Anyway - long story short - "one more liberated".


best regards

Jonas

[TheMatureStudent]

I feel your pain. It's taken me a couple of days until i found a distro that would go on my old i686 PC which i have started to use again. I only had the option from booting from USB as the CD ROM is defunct. I tried Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian with different bootloaders until finally Kubuntu came to the rescue and booted first time. This is my first time into the world of Linux, so i suppose i must of liberated this old PC of mine

[woodsmoke]

Hi Jonas.

I have quite often had problems with 64 bit versions of many different distros.

I'm presently running an AMD 64 dual but it won't take a 64 bit install.

A lot of distros see an AMD 64 as a single processor for reasons that I have not understood, probably that if one is running a dual core then one has to "tweak" the distro on their own. I have no clue...

as to the onboard GPU conflict I saw that several years ago with an "off the wall" board that would not let one use removeable card, but don't remember the name of the board, or the GPU.

I have also had one that would not allow the use of an audio card.

In both cases the setup in bios had no option for changing the situation.

So.... to get back to the main idea of your post, I always install 32 bit and don't have problems.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

I have a relative who owns an HP dv7xxxx (don't remember the model number) which refused to boot any version of Lucid or the beta of Precise. I did get it to boot Puppy just to see if it would, but that isn't a distro one would use unless forced to do so.

The GUP and Wifi chips can still be serious impediments to installing Linux. That's why a LiveCD or LiveUSB is so important.

[Jonas]

I feel your pain. It's taken me a couple of days until i found a distro that would go on my old i686 PC which i have started to use again. I only had the option from booting from USB as the CD ROM is defunct. I tried Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian with different bootloaders until finally Kubuntu came to the rescue and booted first time. This is my first time into the world of Linux, so i suppose i must of liberated this old PC of mine

I'm amazed and impressed with the patience you have! being new to Free software and endure 4 distros with different setups, yet you wont prevail! Most would have made much more effort spilling dirt on the soapbox fora then give this much effort making it work! Welcome to KFN!

Hi Jonas.

I have quite often had problems with 64 bit versions of many different distros.

I'm presently running an AMD 64 dual but it won't take a 64 bit install.

A lot of distros see an AMD 64 as a single processor for reasons that I have not understood, probably that if one is running a dual core then one has to "tweak" the distro on their own. I have no clue...

as to the onboard GPU conflict I saw that several years ago with an "off the wall" board that would not let one use removeable card, but don't remember the name of the board, or the GPU.

I have also had one that would not allow the use of an audio card.

In both cases the setup in bios had no option for changing the situation.

So.... to get back to the main idea of your post, I always install 32 bit and don't have problems.

woodsmoke

Interssting, cause my experience is quite different with installs of 64 bits. I've had 64 installs that worked brilliant, but when they ran, due to the lack of RAM (2 GB) the CPU peaked every ~ 15 seconds or so, which put the system to a 1-2 sec halt, once I installed the 32 bit it ran flawless (took me a while to figure out though). Some kind of mem bottleneck I suppose. Oh yea, forgot to mention I was digging in that BIOS to see if there was some kind of lock or anything, almost borked the whole box at one time, wouldn't even boot (thus the exorcist remark - there was something very odd with the whole thing), eventually I was to physically opened it to reset the BIOS - but never did - rebooted however ....and eventually installed Kubuntu.

I have a relative who owns an HP dv7xxxx (don't remember the model number) which refused to boot any version of Lucid or the beta of Precise. I did get it to boot Puppy just to see if it would, but that isn't a distro one would use unless forced to do so.

The GUP and Wifi chips can still be serious impediments to installing Linux. That's why a LiveCD or LiveUSB is so important.

Yea, old boxes - small OSs, this wasn't "worn down" hardware that was found in the basement, this was quite new, wasn't anything odd with it (except the GPU/factory build). It was a plain Desktop with eth0 wire, simple sound plug in, so I thought that "anything would due" ... I still blame the moon and the stars

I'll drop a line here when I've researched this mal(hard)ware further.

b.r

Jonas

[woodsmoke]

jonas, yes it is just curious.....some people have problems with this, others have problems with that.

I have often thought that my problem with 64 bit installs is that I tend to use older hardware that "should" be supported but is so old that it is kind of "on the edge" of being supported.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

it never occurred to me that a Desktop box would have a onboard GPU, this one had a radeon X1250 onboard GPU.

Recent builds of the generic VESA and FBDEV drivers have gotten pretty good at working with weird hardware. If you add the nomodeset parameter to the kernel before you boot it, this will instruct X to load one of those drivers. I also keep this instructive graphics troubleshooting thread on Ubuntu forums in my bookmark list.

64 installs that worked brilliant, but when they ran, due to the lack of RAM (2 GB) the CPU peaked every ~ 15 seconds or so, which put the system to a 1-2 sec halt, once I installed the 32 bit it ran flawless

There is little benefit to running a 64-bit operating system on a machine with so little RAM.

[abalone]

There is little benefit to running a 64-bit operating system on a machine with so little RAM.

Question... does 64 bit need that much more RAM than 32? I'm still playing it safe with 32 bit, mostly out of ignorance and confusion regarding WINE and Flash. Or is 2 GB really so little? With VLC, Chromium, Kopete, Clementine, Kmail, Ksysguard, Apache2 and the usual Linuxy, KDEy stuff running I'm still using less than half of my 3 GB (which is the maximum that doesn't make my comp go wonky), and I'm not artificially limiting myself, except I really don't care for file indexing. But going by some of the things I read online I sometimes get the impression that I should be hitting swap all the time. I don't even have a swap partition, and I've never run out of RAM. What are "normal" people doing that they need so much RAM? I admit I'm mostly just internetting, writing, watching, listening, and doing a little video-encoding when I get tired of playing DVD-jockey (the web server is strictly for local testing)... I guess it's more CPU- than RAM-intensive, if that.

[rms]

---
What are "normal" people doing that they need so much RAM? I admit I'm mostly just internetting, writing, watching, listening, and doing a little video-encoding when I get tired of playing DVD-jockey (the web server is strictly for local testing)... I guess it's more CPU- than RAM-intensive, if that.
---

If you keep gui apps you need always running and maybe even several instances of them for efficiency sake, depending on how bloated they are, then there's no clear limit to how much RAM is enough.

[GreyGeek]

Run all the apps you normally use at the same time, with all the files and database connections needed. Then open the System Monitor and click on the "System Load" tab. The middle graph is "Memory and Swap History". It will show, of the last few minutes, how much RAM you are using out of your total RAM, and how much of your swap disk you are using. A swap disk isn't generally necessary these days, but old habits die hard. This Acer 7739 came with 4Gb of RAM and I never maxed it out, nor have I ever touched the swap. I added an extra 4Gb just to have it handy. The same for the swap.

I am only running Chromium. System Monitor shows on the RAM usage on the Process Tab. I was using about 0.96Gb out of 7.9Gb, and none of my 5.6 Gb swap. I started Kstars, KAlgebra, Kalzium, Kmail and Celestia. My RAM usage is now 1.1Gb out of 7.8Gb. No swap is being used.

Start using Blender or KLiven and edit a movie and your RAM usage may max and you could start using swap. One never knows what he will need in the future. As it is, I could hold about 14 copies of the Old and New Testament in RAM at one time, each one taking about 500Mb.

[SecretCode]

A swap disk isn't generally necessary these days, but old habits die hard. This Acer 7739 came with 4Gb of RAM and I never maxed it out, nor have I ever touched the swap.

Obviously different people's mileages vary ... I regularly run out of my 4GB. And swapping is quite slow on this system, very noticeable. So I need more RAM!

[perspectoff]

Run all the apps you normally use at the same time, with all the files and database connections needed. Then open the System Monitor and click on the "System Load" tab. The middle graph is "Memory and Swap History". It will show, of the last few minutes, how much RAM you are using out of your total RAM, and how much of your swap disk you are using. A swap disk isn't generally necessary these days, but old habits die hard. This Acer 7739 came with 4Gb of RAM and I never maxed it out, nor have I ever touched the swap. I added an extra 4Gb just to have it handy. The same for the swap.

I am only running Chromium. System Monitor shows on the RAM usage on the Process Tab. I was using about 0.96Gb out of 7.9Gb, and none of my 5.6 Gb swap. I started Kstars, KAlgebra, Kalzium, Kmail and Celestia. My RAM usage is now 1.1Gb out of 7.8Gb. No swap is being used.

Start using Blender or KLiven and edit a movie and your RAM usage may max and you could start using swap. One never knows what he will need in the future. As it is, I could hold about 14 copies of the Old and New Testament in RAM at one time, each one taking about 500Mb.

Even when swap was used, I never saw more than about 1 Gb of swap ever being used. I NEVER allot more than 2 Gb of swap, as discussed many times for years. 5.6 Gb of swap is a waste of hard drive space, IMO.

[perspectoff]

I suspect the installation problem was with the ATI graphics of the Radeon.

The specs of the Acer Aspire M5100 should not have caused any problems in regards to processors or 64-bit vs 32-bit issues.

The "nomodeset" Grub2 boot option to solve the graphics problem (as discussed elsewhere) can be used to install Kubuntu to a working state, and then fiddling with flgrx vs. ATI proprietary graphics drivers can be done (once the system is at least running using the VESA drivers).

[SecretCode]

I NEVER allot more than 2 Gb of swap ... 5.6 Gb of swap is a waste of hard drive space, IMO.

With one exception: if you plan to use hibernation (suspend to disk), you need a swap area (which I think needs to be a partition) that is at least as large as your installed RAM.

[abalone]

Run all the apps you normally use at the same time, with all the files and database connections needed. Then open the System Monitor and click on the "System Load" tab. The middle graph is "Memory and Swap History". It will show, of the last few minutes, how much RAM you are using out of your total RAM, and how much of your swap disk you are using.

Ok, running Clementine (playing), VLC (playing), Spotify (playing), Audacity (recording), Skype (connected), Kopete (connected), Chromium (bunch of tabs), KMail, Renoise (audio sequencer; playing), OpenMPT (WINE; audio sequencer; playing), Inform 7 (IDE; empty new project), Gargoyle (interactive fiction interpreter; game loaded), GIMP (wallpaper loaded), Tilda (pop-up terminal), and KWrite. (Of course I never actually use all of those at the same time.) RAM usage stays constant at 1.7 GB, but CPU usage is around 80-90% per core.

I suppose applications aren't what takes up RAM so much as huge multimedia projects...? Since I don't work with video (yet), 3 GB RAM still feels unfillable to me. Maybe if I played with VirtualBox more? Or had some hefty modern games...

Augh, now I feel I need more RAM, too! But that would mean a new mainboard. Which would mean a new graphics card. And a new CPU. And a new heatsink/fan. And maybe new drives, if PATA is dead by now. Oh, and a new TV tuner or soundcard, if PCI is dead, too. Stupid treadmill