Reading Linux

Well, in both the frustration of some idiot's stickied linux gaming howto, and the fog surrounding linux gaming, I decided to write a nice little ducoment on it over at Extreme Overclocking.

[!]

Let me know how it is! :)

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jun 06, 2005.

The package repository is community managed and as such, grows rabidly.

typo.

other than that, after some ati and intel bashing...well a nice article i must say ^_^

"Life is a queue. You come in, hang around for a bit, get some service, then depart."

Pretty good, but slightly inaccurate in my tests. In my installs SuSe has wiped the floor with every other disto, including Gentoo, in terms of hardware support. X on Gentoo made my laptop LCD screen go into a bad refresh rate and made all the pixels on it start turning white @_@ It was also no help configuring my wireless card. SuSe did these automagically and painlessly.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Yeah, good for you. :)

I'm bery happy you found a laptop that worked with a canned distro, because most require some manual force-feeding of drivers and settings. For example, my old HP worked with gentoo. Period. Suse, red hat, fedora, you name a distro that can be had for free (suse had a freebie thing going at the time so I tried it), and I tried it on the lappy and watched it fail. What laptop are you using? Make, model?

And uh, gentoo didn't auto set anything for you. You forgot to configure it. Everything you get with all your packages is how they come after a fresh compile. So uh, yeah, don't blame gentoo, you're the fella that didn't compile it right...

Lastly, laptops weren't covered in that. They are special. They have thier own breed of CPU's, GPU's, networking and audio equipment that make installing linux on teh buggers freaking impossible.

Anywho, glad suse worked for somebody. :)

Just keep in mind that gentoo will still perform better once you get off your lazy butt and configure it.

I should be ashamed of myself.

Yeah, good for you. :)

I feel fuzzy inside.

I'm bery happy you found a laptop that worked with a canned distro, because most require some manual force-feeding of drivers and settings. For example, my old HP worked with gentoo. Period. Suse, red hat, fedora, you name a distro that can be had for free (suse had a freebie thing going at the time so I tried it), and I tried it on the lappy and watched it fail. What laptop are you using? Make, model?

Not in the 20th century. Recent kernel version have much much much improved laptop support. It's a Dell Inspiron 8000. Also, SuSe has always been and still is free. In fact, you can get the version you purchase in the store for free. SuSe doesn't provide official downloads, but they have stated it is perfectly legal for people to put up torrents of the cd images.

And uh, gentoo didn't auto set anything for you. You forgot to configure it. Everything you get with all your packages is how they come after a fresh compile. So uh, yeah, don't blame gentoo, you're the fella that didn't compile it right...

Uh, I didn't "compile" anything wrong. The issue was with xorg's configuration. If I just plugged in the standard options that _should_ in theory make the lcd screen on the laptop work (vertical sync and horizontal refresh), I'd still get the weird whiteness issue. Other distros set some option differently, and it worked (I know this is the difference because it was the same version of Xorg -- unless of course it was one of gentoo's patches that broke it, which is even worse).

My point though is that configuring that is a waste of time. For some things, customizability is good. But for stuff like setting up your sound and video cards, there's only 1 correct way to do it. Doing it once for learning purposes is great, but if you're looking to actually get something done, you want a distrobution that handles this grunt work for you. Your logic is infinitely regressive -- why have the kernel initialize your hardware for you? You should just do the interrupts yourself by hand everytime the comptuer boots ;)

Lastly, laptops weren't covered in that. They are special. They have thier own breed of CPU's, GPU's, networking and audio equipment that make installing linux on teh buggers freaking impossible.

Mostly wrong nowadays. Linux has much better support for all this then it use to. The only two things that are seen on laptops alot that linux doesn't support well are winmodems (software modems) and "smart batteries" (software batteries). Wireless support is decent but not great, but ndiswrapper lets you use windows wireless drivers so it's ok. Also, the difference between a normal video card and it's mobile version is usually small enough that the same driver can be used for both. For example, my Inspiron's Rage 128 Mobility uses xorg's r128 driver, the same as a desktop with a normal Rage 128 card in it.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Not mostly wrong. I am right when I say that many laptop apparatus are hard to configure. They just are. For example, wireless niccs. They are a pain in the arse and lack linux drivers. Video cards are thier own animal (CPU's are CPU's granted, but some tech requires special drivers). The point is, you're just mad that you forgot to set the right feature. :)

My boot time is faster because I manually configured my kernel. My system is easier for me to reconfigure because I know how, and my system can read files faster than yours can because I use something more or less only used in gentoo. Sure, use canned distros. I am not telling you to do it... But gentoo is ideal for any system and you know what, it won't always be like this (manually configuring shit). Some day, vendors will realize taht a single driver should always and forever work until an update works (*cough* nvidia *cough*) thus negating painful setups. There will be a preinstall discs released soon enough, and you know what, portage eats any package manager alive. And uh, there are standards, but nobody cares to follow them. And there are reasons for that:

They are all centered around red hat.

Gentoo actually had an april fools joke on that. :)

Point is, I use gentoo for my own reasons, and you use suse for yours. There are times when configuring things is required and when taht time comes I can do it and you'll have to do what yoshi so elegently described in a similar thread:

Reinstall. Because everything was handled for you in it's own little way, and when you can't manually set it up of fix it, you're fucked.

Granted, automation is nice, but it only works well when a vendor puts it's I back this stick on it. Linux hasn't and probably will never get that.

And I genuinely meant the "good for you". It's surprising at the very leasy because literally, most lappies have issues with linux. Well most that are worth using... Unfortunately, AMD + nVidia laptops are scarce so laptops in general suck for linux (unless you are a tarded' intel user).

Anyway, I don't care to argue about it. I have my choices, and I genuinely beleive gentoo is better for gaming. Suse simply don't cut it.

In short, all your complaints are about gentoo's strongest sides. If you don't like it, use Suse. gentoo has a bigger user base for a reason: it works and lets me make it work when neccessary. That's what the pros (the people who are using linux for a reason) need and want. Not automagic bullshit.

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jul 12, 2005.

Not mostly wrong. I am right when I say that many laptop apparatus are hard to configure. They just are. For example, wireless niccs. They are a pain in the arse and lack linux drivers.

Go read my post again. Ndiswrapper takes care of this. And distros with good hardware support can set it up for you.

The point is, you're just mad that you forgot to set the right feature. :)

Which was? Judging from your skill level and posts on the gentoo.org forums I can virtually guaruntee my system was more tricked out than yours.

There will be a preinstall discs released soon enough, and you know what, portage eats any package manager alive.

Like? I mentioned before I missed emerge, but apt-get seems to be "good enough." Also, emerge really really really sucks badly at binary packages. So in that sense, it looses to almost everything else.

Reinstall. Because everything was handled for you in it's own little way, and when you can't manually set it up of fix it, you're fucked.

Amazingly, the tools other distros use to configure things for you edit the same files you would edit by hand. There's nothing stopping you on SuSe or any other distro from cracking open /etc/X11/xorg.conf and hacking it by hand if you need to.

Unfortunately, AMD + nVidia laptops are scarce so laptops in general suck for linux (unless you are a tarded' intel user).

There are a lot of satisfied Pentium M users on the gentoo forums. Maybe you should read up on your own distros laptop support.

Anyway, I don't care to argue about it. I have my choices, and I genuinely beleive gentoo is better for gaming.

Don't care to argue or can't? You don't have any evidence to back you up.

In short, all your complaints are about gentoo's strongest sides.

Yeah, 36 hour installs are a strength! Right...

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Sorry for the multiple postings, but everytime I come back I notice some other BS Aynjell has stuck in here :)

My boot time is faster because I manually configured my kernel.

That doesn't mean anything. I can manually configure my kernel under any other distro. And I can do it in such a way as to make things a lot slower too. I'll just specify my architecture to be 486.

My system is easier for me to reconfigure because I know how, and my system can read files faster than yours can because I use something more or less only used in gentoo.

Again, I call bullshit. "Something more or less only used in gentoo." Like WHAT?

You keep telling me that I should just look the other way and that different distros are good for different things, but you're grasping at straws to hold onto Gentoo against all reason as if you don't really believe that.

I do think different distros have their place. But you don't have to defend Gentoo at all costs. Lay off the distro fandom and try to look at things objectively and in the end you'll find the best distro for you. But contending that Gentoo is better, because it just is, because I said so, so there, it has some special thing you don't even know about but I won't say, and I did it myself so it must be better, is dumb.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

That's not what I'm saying. You said suse is better for gaming, and better for hardware. But I contend that there are several machines that suse cannot install on that gentoo can simply because of the low level nature. If you were able to install suse the way you install gentoo (and I'm sure you can in some round about undocumented way) you could get them to work (ATI 320M).

Another thing I can use that most distrobutions cannot is Reiser4. Most do not allow it on initial install and are simply not available. Due to my freedom in initial install (and range of installation medium and methodology) I am able to take advantage of such technology.

I am not contending that gentoo is better, only that your reasons that it is worse are simply not true. Perhaps I am caught up in teh moment. And BS it isn't...

I should be ashamed of myself.

You said suse is better for gaming

Where?

and better for hardware

I said it's better if you don't want to have to reinvent the wheel setting up by hand configuration files that would be setup the exact same way by an automatic tool.

But I contend that there are several machines that suse cannot install on that gentoo can simply because of the low level nature

Hate to break it to you, but gentoo is not that low level. You never touch a single line of code. Emerge does all of the compiling for you. Although Gentoo has a reputation for a hard install, a chimp could do it as long as it could follow directions. It's not point and click, but it's well documented and pretty easy. If you want to get low level, google for "Linux From Scratch."

Another thing I can use that most distrobutions cannot is Reiser4.

Actually, any distribution can. Just download the Reiser4 kernel patches and recompile your kernel. Also, to say that Reiser4 is mostly a gentoo thing is just wrong -- you could probably poll the Reiser4 developers and I bet not a single one of them is running Gentoo. If I had to guess they're probably mostly on Debian and Slackware.

Perhaps I am caught up in teh moment.

Just a little misinformed. Don't sweat it. I was once where you were -- majic ws kind enough to download 5 or 6 distributions, burn them to CD, and ship them to me back when I had dial-up. Got to start somewhere. :)

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

This post was edited by Tetrazome on Jul 12, 2005.