Lowe

Eh i have a feeling this was aimed at me, the version i installed of windows, was the same windows you could buy in the shop the only difference is that my friend copied it for me, so please stop assuming i was using some half working version from the latest warez site. It is windows fault for not working with my new monitor, windows has known problems with a lot of new monitors, infact i've read several articles on it. Now i actually think you're a troll now, your whole tone is completely wrong, you're now speaking as a windows user and i've seen all this before. Windows user = Refuses to listen and thinks he's always right. I've used linux for about a year now, and i can get a working system blasting my music and playing the latest dvd in about 2 hours, windows isn't any faster in that area. I'll take quality over ease of use any day, but still i find linux easier to use than windows so i don't have that problem. I do not like your tone at all, infact it pisses me off.

Give him a gentoo cd.

Well one of the many reasons i switched to linux was for speed, and it is indeed faster for me at least. The most important thing is to have a decent amount of ram, when i had 256mb ram i'll admit gnome was quite slow, however xfce on the otherhand was like lightning. I now have 1GB ram, and i now find xfce slow and gnome to be really fast! WinXP has a horrible interface, yet another reason i left the windows world, those jaggy looking icons and fisher price interface just don't cut it for me. I let my mum use my pc and she really likes gnome, she finds it really easy to use and she loves firefox! The only bit she had a problem with was finding the files she downloaded, so i put a link to her home folder on the desktop so she could easily browse her files and she still can't believe debian is completely free. My sisters computer is now completely linux aswell, since last night and she really is loving how fast it is. Since it's my old computer i installed xfce for her because like i said gnome was a tad slow with 256mb ram, the only problem she is having with it is not being able to view peoples webcams on MSN but im sure something will pop up one day. If my mum and sister can use debian, anyone can. (My sister is 14 btw.)

I'm going to share my expierence with my new computer! Also this was a pc that came with "Made for windows XP" First off windows, i install a fresh (pirated) version of windows xp professional with SP2. During the install there was a weird blinking, and it ended up crashing half way through it for some reason. So i stuck in my old monitor from my last pc to get the install done, once the installation was done i'm going to want some drivers right? Wrong, windows xp didn't even detect my ethernet card, sooo i go through to my sisters room to use her pc and download drivers. It took me 5 hours to find the drivers! So i install them, turn off the computer unplug the old monitor and plug in the new one. Boot up everything is ok now. I then download Debian sarge net install, everything is going fine until it doesn't detect my ethernet card. So i hop on into #debian on freenode and i met a nice guy called Mayhem and he told me to "modprobe forcedeth" i did so and my ethernet card is now working and the net install worked very well! That's what i love about linux if something doesn't work there usually is a way to get it working. I had no sound on first boot, i ran alsaconf sound card wasn't detected. I then upgraded my kernel to 2.6.11 then ran alsaconf, sound card now detected. I downloaded the nvidia drivers installed them fine thanks to a great guide http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debian-nVidia/debian.html . So i would say linux was easier to install. If you don't mind borrowing someone elses pc and searching for drivers for 5 hours then i guess windows would be easier. I mean what would i have done if i never had another monitor or pc? Linux has a very bright future if you ask me, slowely more and more companys are making drivers available for linux, it's only a matter of time. Oh and it took me about 20mins to peel that "made for windows xp" sticker off too.

Yep it seems to be fixed now, i wonder what the problem was though. Oh well main thing is it's fixed. :)

Don't you just hate it when people bump old threads? -_-

Solarian i still think your desktop is the first good looking KDE desktop i have ever seen.

How dare you insult the gnome foot! :o I will never replace that cute little foot.

I have a geforce 6600, but i'm not really a pc gamer so i couldn't care less if it was bad or good. :P

Just run "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" or did ubuntu remove that?

uhm yes quite easyily. When you boot the cd, instead of bashing Enter type linux26 That's what i did, then upgraded to testing (etch) and installed the 2.6.11 kernel since the 2.6.8 seemed to have problems on my hardware for some reason. For other boot options press F2, F3 and so on..

Still struggling along, i don't have much choice though since most linux distro's hate my hardware. I reinstalled ubuntu hoping it would fix itself but no such luck. I also installed gentoo yesterday but it's just not what im looking for. I also tried kannotix and i must say, i really disliked it. I'm hoping when fedora core 4 will be the soloution to most of my problem, but im Still looking around to see if there is anything useable in the meantime. UPDATE: OH YEAH!! Good news, i installed debian "etch" the new testing and wow first thing i did was install "kernel-image-2.6.11" everything gets detected now, sound works, internet works! So i'm quite happy everything is working now.

I tried the debian net install, it still doesn't detect that nForce crap. I'll try kannotix now, bleh maybe it will detect it.

Well, i got really pissed off and did a complete wipe last night reinstalling windows, which was a VERY bad idea, lol it took me 5 hours to find drivers for my motherboard, not fun at all, but i managed to get it working ok. I know i said i wouldn't install windows, but i only made it a 10GB partiton for playing warcraft 3 and worms 3d. Today i will be installing the new stable debian sarge, hopefully will be released today as planned. 190GB for linux and 10GB for windows, 10GB should be enough for playing some games. I will do everything else on linux. Sounds like a good setup to me. If the new debian treats me badly, i'll wait for the fedora 4.

"root@ubuntu:/home/lowe # nvidia-glx-config enable A backup of xorg.conf has been stored as: /var/backups/xorg.conf.2005-06-04-16:53:54. If the new configuration will not work you will be able to revert the changes simply using this command: cp /var/backups/xorg/xorg.conf.2005-06-04-16:53:54 /etc/X11/xorg.conf Warning: your X configuration has been succesfully changed. In order to take full advantage of the changes, X needs to be restarted." Any idea what that does? I'm going to reboot and see if it stops doing it now.

Well i was too lazy to download hoary and just used my warty cd's then upgraded to hoary, so i guess that's what messed it up? I'll try kannotix and mepis, even though i hate KDE, it should be simple enough to install gnome. If that doesn't work out to well, i might just download hoary and see if it works better with a fresh install.

I think the two main things for me, in a linux distro is the display working correctly and my ethernet card being detected, the rest i can usually fix somehow or work around it. Now the problem is, picking another distro, with a decent package manager and is easily upgradeable (So i don't have to reinstall every 6 months) and really it comes down to other debian based distro's or gentoo (which i would never be able to install anyway) the latest debian sarge installer doesn't even detect my ethernet card, and since it was a netinstall i was pretty much f00ked, the other ones either cost money or are just bloated windows-look-alikes (Which i really hate). I'm not a big fan of RPM's either, and when it comes down to it, mandrake and fedora are the only RPM based distro's that have good package management tools. (That i know of) One other thing that annoyed me about ubuntu is that alsa doesn't seem to work either, i mean using esd for listening to music? No thanks. I'm hoping the next release of ubuntu will be a lot better. I don't ask for much, all i really want and need in a distro is. Good package selection, easy to install multimedia apps. Good package manager. Not bloated. A few apps and i'll do the rest myself. Plays my anime Plays my music. Allows me to browse the web. I'm actually pretty pissed, i can't find a distro that will just DO those without too much messing around. I used to always run back to windows when i had these problems, but that is no longer an option, there is no way in hell i'd ever go back now. I might be sounding like some stupid kid, who is just moaning, well maybe i am but it's not a very good feeling buying a new pc only to walk into a brick wall. Now all i need to do is find a distro, that does what i want it to do and recognize all my hardware which seems to be a problem with the few distro's i've tried on my new pc. I might try mandrake again, since it has fairly good hardware detection or fedora or i just don't know. I'm sorry for this post, i'm angry, smell and it's 6am. I'm sure you understand. :unsure:

So i got a new pc yesterday, and after like 4 distro's failing to recognize my ethernet card and sound card, i thought i would just go back to ubuntu. So first i'll tell you exactly what's happening since the screenshot doesn't tell much. I'll just be happily browsing some sites, then all of a sudden the screen gets white marks over it, like someone put a piece of A4 paper over my screen, now if i move my mouse they kinda go away but come back again i managed to take a screenshot now it only shows the wallpaper messed up there, but firefox and everything else is white and clears a little when i move my mouse. Some stuff i think might be useful in identifying the problem. Monitor: Viewsonic 17 inch lcd or whatever. Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce 6600 Packages related to that installed. Nvidia GLX Nvidia Kernel Common Nvidia Kernel Source Nvidia Settings All of the above ubuntu packages. I don't have a clue what's wrong, it's most likely something i did to mess it up, but i can't think of anything. I dunno if this has anything to do with it, but i logged out and back in, ten mins later it started messing up like that. If i can't fix this, i'll need to find another distro or something, because i've heard the ubuntu nvidia packages are pretty messed up. Any help is appreciated. (Also if you feel like offering an alternative distro with no messing around, go ahead) EDIT: It's done it twice, since this post. I'm not in the mood for this, so i'm going for some other distro.

I'm curious, why would someone need windows fonts?

Ugh people actually use sound themes? I turn all sound off, nothing more annoying than listening to your music up full blast and someone messages you on gaim. I'm curious though, what's so good about having sound when you click a button, login or whatever? I don't see anything useful at all about it, i just find it hugely annoying.

You don't need to extract the themes, infact if i extract them they don't seem to work. It's different with icons though, you need to extract them. I put all mines in ~/.themes .

Well i just run gnome-theme-manager. Sounds like that's where you've been, so i'll show you a screenshot. (click to enlarge)

Oh i did use it, until this morning. Only thing i don't like about mandrake is the evil RPMs. :P

Nah i'm using some weird distro at the moment anyway, which i really don't like. So i'm either going to install Debian or Mandrake again, haven't decided.

oh, thanks. I'll try it next time i format. (Which is like every 2 days for me -_-)