I would like to switch to Ubuntu... but i have a few concerns about how apps and drivers are installed, they seem way different than windows.

My pci modem and sound card are not well known, would i struggle to install them?

Why don't you just tell us what modem and soundcard you use...? :-)

have you looked to see if they are compatable from ubuntu's website????

inno3d extreme 5.1 sound card
connexant pci adsl modem

get the live cd. check if your hardware is compatible (it probably is). that is the eaisest way to see if your system is compatible with an OS

You mean a InnoVISION Audio Extreme 5.1? That card's based on a CMI8738-6CH chip, this one should work without problems. The modem should work, too - maybe it'll need some tweaking:

http://patrick.spacesurfer.com/linux_conexant_pci_adsl.html

thank u for the help.

Here is an example of a common application install manager.
[attachmentid=126822]

The whole Open Source world of software is at your fingertips. Select what you want and install it. This same system will also keep every single application on your box up to date with the latest fixes and new features for free.

amazing

Mark and the others here are right. The "noob-friendly" distros are just as easy (if not easier) than Windows for the beginner. This may seem odd when you hear about all of the problems with hardware and such, but for the most part, it just works! Look at the lists here for the most recommended "noob-friendly" distro and give it a whirl. Try the Live CD version first and see if it "feels right" to you. Then you can install it and dig in!

Even in the Windows forums there are posts after posts about various issues............ so all OSs have there issues.

Barney

Except that, in Debian, Synaptic would list 18,000 packages rather than 4,800.

Either way Synaptic ****en owns!!! just firing up that app makes me almost orgasm everytime

I update daily.

I get annoyed if there are only about half a dozen packages that have changed since the day before.

Except I don't want to wade through 4x the crap I don't need or want to get the app I am after.


Oh, how I long for the days when I could ban you!

Whoa! Love life not what it used to be??? (Just kidding!)

ROFLMAO

Yep, Ubuntu rocks

Mod fight!

I fail to understand the significance? Synaptic is just a GUI frontend to apt, is in not?? apt has been ported, I know it will run on fedora, ubuntu, suse, etc.. Synaptic could be compiled on basically any linux distro running Gtk+ 2.4 can it not?

Would not pulling up a listing of 18k entries be a waste of time and resources when looking for a specific item or type of item? And again would not the amount of listings be determined by which and the number of repositories you are using..

You can also run more than one package management system, etc..

I am using the standard Debian repositories (okay, I've added the experimental Gnome 2.10 and KDE 3.4 repositories but these only update existing packages, they don't really add to the over-all count significantly).

The Debian repositories (.DEBs) are considerable more complete than the apt4rpm repositories (which, I gather, are stored in .RPM format)

Generally speaking, almost everything that you could ever think of is stored in the Debian repositories.

If you need to find something you search. There are also category views (Gnome, KDE, games, etc...)

Mod fight with fish Smelly!

One thing that I would really, really, like to see in Synaptic is the date of when the package was last updated.

Am I missing something obvious? I know you can have Synaptic tell you which packages are new since your last update (or whatever) but when deciding between two similar packages I'd like to know which one is more current (and likely still in active development) without doing a search on sourceforge.

I've never used Synaptic, so I don't know all of it's features, but is there a way to right-click and view the properties of the package and see a compiled date or something like that? In YaST, there is a build date if you check under Technical Data, so I didn't know if Synaptic had anything like that

Don't know about APT, but with Portage, that's possible. Each package comes with a changelog, including the creation and ebuid-update dates (but I don't know if any frontend parses that info):

alsa-lib Changelog:
[...]
*alsa-lib-1.0.9 (27 May 2005)

27 May 2005; Jan Brinkmann <luckyduck@gentoo.org> +alsa-lib-1.0.9.ebuild:
New upstream version released, see #94196.

*alsa-lib-1.0.9_rc3 (05 May 2005)

05 May 2005; Jeremy Huddleston <eradicator@gentoo.org>
-files/alsa-lib-1.0.9_rc2-87099.patch,
-files/alsa-lib-1.0.9_rc2-gcc4.patch, -alsa-lib-1.0.9_rc2-r1.ebuild,
+alsa-lib-1.0.9_rc3.ebuild:
Version bump.
[...]

In Synaptic, you highlight a package and go to the menu (with your cursor) Package -> Download Changelog. Sometimes there's date information within, sometimes not.

I want them to add a column so we can sort by date.

I'll look into the changelog.

Would like to see that option too.
Another thing that it really should be changed in synaptic,
is the option "browse the documentation". It's only possible
to use that if you install dwww :
Now, dwww needs to have a webserver installed.
Don't think it would be the best solution, if people just want to read the documentation
of a package, to go and install a webserver...

ok, thanks to everyone that helped me switch to Ubuntu.

I have it up and running now and i think it has great potential as an OS.

I do have a few niggly issues if anyone can help.

I added another IDE hard disk as slave after i did the ubuntu install and its not showing up

My netgear dm602 router was auto-detected via ethernet, but i want to use the usb connection on the modem instead so i can use the ethernet for my PS2. The usb driver on the netgear site suggest its for windows.

Also, i think i might have buggered up my Sata hard disk, i formatted it within Ubuntu then decided to put it in my other PC to install ubuntu or windows but it just ticks slowly and not much screen action... i can't even make it to the installer it just hangs at dos.

Try this in a terminal, and post the output in the forum here:(and that is a lowercase "L", not the number "1")
This will tell you every hard drive it sees.


Using the ethernet port will be most transparent and problem-free. However, USB may work. If not natively, then through something like NDISwrapper, I think. I have no experience with that, but it should help point you in a possible direction. We have a HOWTO on setting up NDISwrapper in our HOWTO & FAQ section here.


I dunno. Try running qtparted and see what you can see with that tool. Also, the fdisk command above might tell us what is going on.

If the drive is going to be reformatted and re-used, and you don't care about the data on it, you may need to just wipe the partition table data. If you need to, you can possibly remove all data with qtparted, or you can do this with a dd command.

ok heres the log;

andrew@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Password:

Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 9634 77385073+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 9635 9964 2650725 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 9635 9964 2650693+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/hdb: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 4791 38483676 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 4792 4998 1662727+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 4792 4998 1662696 82 Linux swap / Solaris
andrew@ubuntu:~$

For the DM502, I'd suggest to get a cheap Ethernet switch and connect the PC and the PS2 using Ethernet. Most USB ADSL modems are problematic on Linux (and pretty much every OS - Ethernet really is the weapon of choice wherever possible)...

Well, your slave drive (on the Primary IDE) is there. It is /dev/hdb. Looks like you just need to mount the partition(s) you need access to. If no mount points are created, you will have to make some yourself and perform the mount manually. Once you know what you want, you can add entries into your /etc/fstab to automatically mount these every time you boot.

Looks like your second drive had a separate Linux installation. Did you want to boot into it? Or share some of the data on it? Or wipe it clean and use it in your current install? Or perhaps something else...?

i wanted to wipe it clean and use it in my current install.

If you've got something like QTParted installed, fire that up. Otherwise do a sudo cfdisk /dev/hdb and delete all the partitions on it and create a new one.

Then do one of the following:
ext2:
mke2fs /dev/hdb1
ext3:
mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1
reiserfs:
mkreiserfs /dev/hdb1

And then add an entry into your fstab to mount that one.

I would suggest that you get a cheapo firewall/router/switch device. They usually come with 4 LAN ports and one WAN port. Connect the ethernet port of the Netgear DM602 to the WAN port and then connect your PS2 and your Linux box to the LAN ports. You'll still have two LAN ports left over for other computers in the future.

I would personally recommend this even if you switch back to Windows

a) You get a NAT firewall
b) You get ethernet access to your computer
c) You don't need to mess with drivers at all
d) It works with every OS (heck, you could probably make it work with DOS if you really tried)