So I finally got around to getting Ubuntu 8.04 installed on my desktop at work…which means my Windows XP working area is being moved into a Windows 2000 SP4 VM.  At least until we stop using SourceSafe.

There were some issues with getting it up and running though, mostly hardware-related.

ATI Radeon X1550 DualHead card - This was a pain in the ass to get set up in Ubuntu…primarily because it’s a PCI card running off a PCI-E bus and has some memory ranges molestered by the BIOS on my Dell.  Basically, it still shows 2 Intel 915 cards (.0 and .1; the .1 doesn’t really exist, it’s just a memory area for a second head on the card that’s not there) and 2 ATI cards (again, .0 and .1).  Ubuntu seemed to have detected everything OK, using the fglrx driver for the Radeon cards, but the displayconfig-gtk tool is hosed beyond comprehension and couldn’t sort its ass from a hole in the ground.  Don’t use it.  Anyway, Ubuntu does something really, really, stupid here…it turns on Beryl/XGL/Compiz/whatever they call it these days and sets the default BPP in xorg.conf to 8; a resolution that is unsupported by the fglrx driver; not that you’d ever figure that out, since gdm decides to init a failsafe X config and totally clobber your X11 logs.  After manually molestering the xorg.conf and getting fglrx-control package (for my catalyst control panel) I finally got the fual monitors set up correctly.

Here’s my xorg.conf, in case anyone else is doing battle with this card:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Generic Keyboard”
Driver        “kbd”
Option        “XkbRules”    “xorg”
Option        “XkbModel”    “pc105″
Option        “XkbLayout”    “us”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Configured Mouse”
Driver        “mouse”
Option        “CorePointer”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier    “ATI1″
BusID        “PCI:5:0:0″
Driver        “fglrx”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier    “ATI2″
BusID        “PCI:5:0:1″
Driver        “fglrx”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “LCD1″
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “LCD2″
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Screen1″
Monitor        “LCD1″
Device        “ATI1″
DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Screen2″
Monitor        “LCD2″
Device        “ATI2″
DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Default Screen”
Monitor        “Configured Monitor”
Device        “Configured Video Device”
DefaultDepth    24
SubSection “Display”
Virtual        2560 1024
Depth        32
EndSubSection

EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier    “Default Layout”
Screen        “Screen1″
Screen        “Screen2″ RightOf “Screen1″
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load        “dbe”
Load        “dri”
Load        “glx”
EndSection

Gotta love that “brand new” feel of a gentoo install after a emerge --deep --update world ^_^

So my #2 machine at work runs Fedora Core 6. I recently upgraded the card in it, and the nVidia driver refused to install, because it couldn’t find an include, linux/config.h. This include file was removed by Fedora for Core 6; it’s use is deprecated anyway by the kernel maintainers, so nVidia should go back and update their legacy drivers or something.

I did some googling, and the correct solution here is to extract the package, and modify a file, like so:

su
mv /path/to/nvidia/driver/that/you/downloaded/b4/u/did/su .
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0.version-pkg1.run -x
cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0.version-pkg1/usr/src/nv
vi nv-linux.h
[replace #include with #include ]
cd ../../../..
./nvidia-installer

And that’s all there is to it. Now edit your xorg.conf if you need to.

So I just downloaded and installed this on my laptop. For once, it’s fast enough and featured enough to replace all the ghostscript-based PDF viewers I have on there.

In the past, it has been a hard sucking piece of crap with Motif statically compiled into it (at least judging by the look and feel of the app) but now it appears almost exactly like the Windows and Mac OSX versions of Acrobat Reader. It’s even linked with GTK+ now, so it looks workable for once.

Also, it looks like the PocketPC version has been updated. This doesn’t work any better than the previous versions in the sense that it pixel doubles, but with the right MUI hack, the program is incredibly useful.

At any rate, just thought everyone should know.

so, after struggling with fc5, and hating it, and struggling with suse 10 (and hating it) i decided to just bite the bullet and install gentoo on my work linux box like i should have done in the first place.

i now have a fully operational gentoo (optimized) system compiled completely with gcc 4.1 and i couldn’t be happier with it.

once again, gentoo has proven itself the best distro for performance freaks. suse, fedora…you guys suck.

So AMD is gonna play the Wintel game and optimize it’s processors for linux (and help make linux work faster on AMD chips). W00t!
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/72169

Being a solid AMD64 AND a Linux user, this has to be the best news I’ve heard in awhile.

so after about 3 hours trying to figure this thing out (and finally learning by sifting through pages and pages of mailing list archives) it turns out that the fedora maintainers have removed the “all” and “minimal” install options from the fedora core 5 (fc5) anaconda setup. the “all” option i’ve never used because i’ve never seen more bloat than trying to install every package in a distro like that, but the “minimal” was a tragic loss to me.
now, i don’t know about anyone else on this, but i like to set up distros like fedora by using the minimum install and setting up anything else i need using yum via the network. the result is a lean (as lean as fedora can be, heh), mean, linux machine with minimal crap that i don’t use.

thanks alot jerkoffs, im now setting up suse oss 10.1 in a virtual machine, and my work machine is next. i used to love fedora core, until you guys went and ruined it for those of us with a head on our shoulders. even if you get wise and bring back “minimal”, i still may not ever use fedora again…you pissed me off >:(
p.s., to those of you asking “wait…tom, don’t you use gentoo!?” yes, i do…on my personal computer that i have the time to maintain and run emerge often. my work machine i just don’t have time to do that with, so i use a binary distro. it’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than windows.