So... Windows and MS finally blew my last fuse. I've now in two whole straight days been trying to install Linux, first Ubuntu but for some reason Grub gave me a hard time and my SATA hdd acted like an IDE in BIOS. I've been trying install Ubuntu myself at first from 08.00 to 23.00 with no luck. Next day I went to a friends place and he too couldn't fix this Grub problem. So out of actual options and no good available information on the Internet we went with openSUSE.
This got too this Grub problem but when I changed that the BIOS DIDN"T find the hard drive the OS would actually run.
Now when I plug my other SATA hdd in and try to boot the OS I get a black screen.

So after the second day coming to an end I still don't have a 100% functioning computer but at least I've left Windows (and openSUSE works as long as my other SATA is not plugged in). I will now only be using that for games and for work with Photoshop and alike.

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I have one question though, are some people familiar with this OS? As I have an ATI gfx card and I cannot seem to change it in the "Graphics and Monitor"-whatever section.

ok, openSUSE is a really bad linux OS imo.

anyways, look into super grub disk, I use that all the time for grub related problems...

http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/

And why is it bad and which distros are good except for Ubuntu?

openSUSE is fine. They've got some of the latest developments in their releases and 10.3 improved boot time quite nicely too.
try fedora and debian too.
all are top quality.
I would trust them with my life.

If you want to get up and running in a fairly short time, and in the process actually learn enough about Linux to roll without a specific distro, you could give Archlinux a shot. As an added bonus, you'll develop secondary sex characteristics.

well I just don't like some of the choices they made. Then again, linux is customizable so...

Anyways, I'd go with ubuntu, fedora, or PCLinuxOS. Mandriva is good too.

Well, while I'm at it I might as well try them all. At least I wanna try both Fedora and Debian. They both seems nice, also I'm a bit curious about Red Hat. But getting one with the most support would be best, and having and ATI card I know I will get some issues.

the thing about Red Hat is that you don't want to use it at home.

Their releases favor stability over novelty, meaning that they try to get their system as reliable, and bug-free as possible, and introduce an infrequent release schedule to nail down that stability.

That's not to mean that distros with shorter release times are inherently unstable, they're quite stable enough for home users who aren't depending on their computers for mission-critical business applications for which system failure would cause loss of life or (more importantly) loss of money.
The benefit of distros with shorter release schedules (or rolling releases) is that it's easy to have the latest and (usually) the best versions of applications and system libraries which leads to self-fulfillment and great inner peace.,

The point is, stable distros are best for workstations and servers, not personal computers, so definitely give priority to fedora and debian in your testing. And archlinux is great if you like a rolling release schedule but are sane enough to stay away from Gentoo.

No distrowar, but imho the one and only...


Debian.

Thank you.

C.Brutail wrote:No distrowar, but imho the one and only...


Debian.

Thank you.

I would have suggested that but it's a bit weird setting up since a graphical interface isn't installed by default. or has that changed since I last tried debian?

[TSA] Psychcf wrote:I would have suggested that but it's a bit weird setting up since a graphical interface isn't installed by default. or has that changed since I last tried debian?

That depends on which configurations you enable in the tasksel menu, iirc "desktop enviroment" is enabled by default, but i'm not a 100% shure and don't feel like running a vm to test atm...

I've tried to install Fedora now but I get the same thing with it that I get with Ubuntu. As soon as I've installed it and am about to boot it I either get into a place where "grub" is your command line (instead of C:/, user@comp>, etc.) and from there I'm stuck. When I switch the cables in my computer, the same way it worked for openSUSE, I get a black screen after the boot menu from Fedora.
I think it's my motherboard or something that's at fault. I think it hates Linux. I have 5 SATA ports, but apparently only the first one actually acts like SATA, and it's with that that openSUSE worked (first one has a different color that the others). But as soon as I choose the other ports my SATA hdd acts like it was an IDE disk.
Could be bios too, but I'm not yet ready to update bios as when morfar tried it 3 times (with his computers), in the way you should, he destroyed them all.
Today I'm going to a friends place, he's kinda a little Linux guru so I'll see what he does, although I don't have high expectations.

Most likely I will have to but another motherboard or something, any tips on which ones are good with Linux?

If that's the only issue, you can reconfigure grub to work.

At the grub> prompt, try:

ls (hd0,0)
ls (hd0,1)
ls (hd0,2)
ls (hd1,0)

etc. until you see a partition with a "boot" folder in it. Assume it's (hd0,2). Then, try:

root (hd0,2)
ls /boot

You will see a file /boot/vmlinuzsomething and a matching initrd file. Use it:

kernel /boot/vmlinuzsomething
initrd /boot/initrdsomething
boot

If you can get the system to run that way - and you should be able to - edit your /boot/grub/grub.conf and update the root line - I suppose it is the "root" line which has the bug.

super grub disk will generate a grub configuration file for you iirc...

Alright, I now finally have Ubuntu, but it took for me to use another computer than my original as the motherboard on it refused to work with Linux (something with the sata ports, power struggle and IDE port failures).
Now the only problem which I can't 100% go past is that I need Photoshop or some program equivalent to it, Gimp doesn't do the trick. But I suppose I will have to have a "work" computer and a "personal" computer. The work computer will need Windows sadly for some programs (and for most of the games). So work/game computer, bad combination But luckily Maya exists for Linux.

ai wrote:I need Photoshop or some program equivalent to it, Gimp doesn't do the trick.

I know many people find this. Conversely, lots of people, including I can not stand Photoshop having got used to Gimp and it's really weird interface. I don't like Photoshop from a largely technical standpoint as it seems pretty clueless at image compression. I've had to fix enough bloated badly encoded JPEG's from Photoshop users to get this stage of frustration though.

If it's just a user interface thing (Gimp is a very powerful program) then Gimpshop may help your transition:
http://www.gimpshop.com/

Krita would be the next best bet, however as you use a Gnome based desktop there may be large dependency chains to deal with as it's a KDE app. It should be in a repository I would have thought.

gimp's UI makes much more sense in 2.4, so I'd try that out.

Well, I've just started with Gimp so I have many more functions to explore. The UI of Gimp doesn't bother me at all, I just hope it's functionality is enough for my needs. I may have been to quick to say Gimp might not do the trick, and I hope as I explore the universe of Gimp I find it to be good.
I will check out that gimpshop thing, thanks for the link

Ed wrote:If it's just a user interface thing (Gimp is a very powerful program) then Gimpshop may help your transition:
http://www.gimpshop.com/

Anyone ever managed to get gimpshop working on linux? I tried a while ago and didn't succeed. The source code is unusable since every file contains some weird binary header, so it won't compile and the debian package is horrible (it installs everything to /usr/local) and didn't have a different gui than regular gimp.