Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [ Black Dragon ] on Saturday 01 April 2006 20:22 \__
>
>> Black Dragon wrote:
>>
>>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>
>>>> __/ [ Black Dragon ] on Friday 31 March 2006 01:18 \__
>>
>>>>> This weekend I'll be booting that Knoppix disk just for kicks on a
>>>>> brand new system built solely for gaming. The system is now running
>>>>> Windows XP 64 bit trial, and it works flawlessly. I have no doubt that
>>>>> when the trial times out I'll be happy to purchase the OS. The MSI
>>>>> (K8N Diamond Plus) mobo is based on the Nvidia nForce4 chipset and is
>>>>> loaded with all the spiffy goodies gamers (my son in this case) need.
>>>>> I'd be mighty impressed if the SLI (dual Geforce 7900 GT GPUs in 16x
>>>>> PCIe slots) graphics worked from the get-go. Same if it recognizes
>>>>> either of the on board SATA RAID controllers. If I'm happy with what I
>>>>> see I'll likely go buy some more hard disks and a boxed SuSE distro
>>>>> and attempt to take a full install for a ride.
>>
>>>>> Unless somebody has a better suggestion about Linux distros' for
>>>>> cutting edge hardware that is.
>>
>>>> SuSE would probably be perfect. As long as you needn't *chokes* pay for
>>>> it as a corporate client.
>>
>>> Cool. Now that my son has been hearing good things about Linux and
>>> gaming, that is, that some of the games he plays Linux versions
>>> out-perform the Windows versions, my own interest in Linux is slowly
>>> being revived. :-)
>>
>> Well, Knoppix booted on the new machine but it had no sound, no network,
>> and no hard disks. That makes it quite useless, especially with the lack
>> of network connectivity. I wanted to save the output from dmesg but had
>> no place to write it. :-(
>>
>> I did find after doing some research that I'd have to compile drivers
>> into a Linux kernel to get sound, networking, and hdds working, and even
>> then it wouldn't support the SLI display. That's way too much work to do
>> to not be able to utilize the hardware to its full potential, so it looks
>> like gaming on Linux waits.
>>
>> Subject: Disappointment with Linux
>>
>> Indeed. :-/
>
> Knoppix?!?! Why? I hear of it most frequently in the context of live CD's
> and data recovery (for Windows). I never tried Knoppix, but I'd advise you
> to try Ubuntu, or even SuSE. They never let me down.
>
> The following was published today:
>
>
http://www.linuxforums.org/reviews/overview_of_the_ten_major_linux_distributions.html
>
> Also see a thread (or threads) on games in C.O.L.A. I recently mentioned
> http://tremulous.net/ , which was mentioned again today, so I installed it
> successfully. It just needs OpenGL to be supported, which was fine with my
> SuSE and Ubuntu install apart from when I go dual-head display.
>
That's a nice overview for people that are relatively new to linux. Although
judging by the comments not everyone agree with everything that is said,
probable not too surprising <smile>
Picking up on a couple of things:
<quote>
Ubuntu
Cons: The business model doesn't seem to be viable.
</quote>
I wounder exactly what he means by that, and does he think it's a distro
that is here today and gone tomorrow? I for one hope not, as this distro
seems to be going from strength to strength, and I think that it is one of
the best ones available.
<quote>
Knoppix
Pros: Live-CD, excellent hardware detection, good and up to date package
selection.
</quote>
I have never actually tried this particular Live-CD but I noticed that the
Live EliveCD was using this technology when I went poking around. It is the
*only* distro I have tried that has failed sort out my monitor out (which
is nothing special) and failed to start X, so I think I might have grounds
to dispute the 'excellent hardware detection' claim. More's the pity :-(.
<quote>
Mandriva
As a result, Mandriva is highly up-to-date and even though some of its
releases are buggy it remains the best distribution for people who are new
to Linux or people who find it acceptable to experience some crashes if
this means benefiting from the latest versions of applications.
</quote>
Mandriva version 10.2 was one of the first distributions I tried, and I can
certainly testify to it's buggy nature, even the find files was broken. To
start with I thought it was me, until I saw a bug report turn up in the
Mandrake user group some time latter. May be it's just me, but this
particular distro I just could not get on with, probable not helped by the
really inferior hardware I had to hand at the time.
I remain a little puzzled why people think this is a good distro for
beginners, personally I think there are better choices like Ubuntu and
Mepis to mention just two. Recommending a buggy distro to new users does
not seem to me to be a particularly good idea, for all the obvious reasons.
Thanks for the post, made an interesting read (at least for me).
Regards,
M
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