Jacking in Jaunty

Jaunty is giving me some hassle. It doesn't seem capable of running a separate x session on each monitor using nvidia drivers. It's also not prepared to fold on my graphics card at the moment.

Beyond that it doesn't seem terribly different to hardy or intrepid. I'll probably go back to Debian in the near future, every time I try it I get a little further before frustration turns me away.
 
I have Sabayon

Absolutely love it to bits.

Thats on

Foxconn NF4
x2-4400 @ Stock
4x1GB Crucial
2x6600GT ( In SLI mode too !! )
Audigy 4

Not tried Sabayon on my laptop???? hmm... Wondering why now because Video playback isabsolutely perfect even with all the stupid eye-candy of compiz, the video playback and indeed even the games I have got running via Wine, all play flawlessly in a window even when spanned half way across multiple desktops, and even when imscrolling the cubed desktops, the video playback and game displays are perfect.

Im trying out Debian right now and I want so much to stick with it, but its hard to when nothing seems to want to do what it does in ubuntu.
 
Well 8.10 has made it to Wednesday - I didn't really want to say anything to jinx it but so far so good. No freezes until now, suspend works (woo!) and I've even managed to fix my video tearing issue so I've got my compiz effects back. The only thing that doesn't work properly is my wireless when I resume from suspend - I have to disable and re-enable the driver before it comes back to life. Bit annoying but I can live with that.

As far as I can gather this release is supported until Apr 2010. It will be interesting when I'm finally forced to upgrade, hopefully it will be a better experience than Jaunty.
 
I have to throw my opinion in to the hat..

I had been hearing good things about ubuntu lately, and having a bit of spare time on my hands, and not really giving Linux a go before, I decided to chuck ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on to my main work PC.

Now, I had tried the OS through a Live CD so I knew what I was expecting, but having it as a 1-and-only OS was a big step. Especially when my work PC had been running XP all along, and the spec is well "performance overt".

I would like to say I found the whole UI and layout very intuitive. I particularly liked the Applications menu bar, and the administrator and preference menus (you can tell I'm new to this :D) I also liked the way you can search for apps, and install them direct from the Add/Remove window.

...oh, and it added all the network printers with 1 click.. result.

I will say I had some initial problems with nVidia drivers giving me an "out of range" message, meaning I couldn't set the resolution above 800x600.. but that was easily fixed. Certainly, it wasn't enough to taint my view of things..

Possibly the biggest regret was not thoroughly checking Office 2007 compatibility before making the leap. By that, I mean OpenOffice 3 seems to handle most of the files I throw at it, but it will completely die if I throw a complex .xlsx (excel 2007) file at it.

It hasn't crashed or hung on me yet, and as I'm a complete newbie I've been pretty much digging through every menu and pressing every button, so that's a bonus.. my only regret is that it looks more and more likely I will have to dual boot Windows just for the Office apps.
 
EVH said:
...oh, and it added all the network printers with 1 click.. result.
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This was my experience too. I was printing a test page within 1 minute. On our XP boxes it's a 10 minute driver install and then another few minutes sat in front of an auto-configuration screen that freezes the desktop. To be fair thats probably the HP driver but I was quite impressed with the way it (Fedora 10 in this case) worked out of the box.

As an occasional Office 2007 user I dont tend to have that problem with file formats as from day 1 I've always saved in XP/2003 format. Virtualbox is really good though if you can spare an XP license.
 
theheyes said:
As an occasional Office 2007 user I dont tend to have that problem with file formats as from day 1 I've always saved in XP/2003 format. Virtualbox is really good though if you can spare an XP license.
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Yeah, I always save in 2003 wherever possible, but I hit a wall with the range of columns in excel 2003 and the only solution is to use 2007.

I've looked in to Virtualbox.. it does look amazing. Do you have any experience with it? Performance won't be great (2GB RAM) I'm assuming..
 
EVH said:
Possibly the biggest regret was not thoroughly checking Office 2007 compatibility before making the leap. By that, I mean OpenOffice 3 seems to handle most of the files I throw at it, but it will completely die if I throw a complex .xlsx (excel 2007) file at it.
Click to expand...

Have you tried WINE?
 
Rhys said:
Have you tried WINE?
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Heres a guide for 8.10.

Please note I haven't tried it. You would have to go to the WineHQ website to get the repository links for Jaunty (easily done).

Look at the App database there are some regressions for Wine >1.14 (I think) when installing Office 2007. But perhaps that 8.10 guide deals with this issues (by installing some extra MS stuff through WineTricks).

You may find some stuff is broken when running it through Wine (fonts, scripts, etc.) There will people suggesting not to do it - "it will destabilise your system", etc. I would say it's just like getting a proprietary GPU drive (i.e. risky) but you always have the CLI to uninstall stuff in an emergency!!

Bob
 
So, I finally got an ATI driver to work in Linux. Reinstalled Jaunty last night, grabbed the 9.5 package from the AMD website and by 8:00 this morning I finally got my 4850 almost right. Monitor still won't do 75Hz yet, but I know how I'm going to sort that.

The driver and control panel still suck balls compared with the ones Nvidia put out for their cards, mind!
 
Rhys said:
Have you tried WINE?
Click to expand...

I haven't tried it but I looked in to it and decided it couldn't cut the mustard.

I need every aspect of the app to work, and there are still some bugs / features that won't work so it's a no-go :(
 
JRS said:
So, I finally got an ATI driver to work in Linux. Reinstalled Jaunty last night, grabbed the 9.5 package from the AMD website and by 8:00 this morning I finally got my 4850 almost right. Monitor still won't do 75Hz yet, but I know how I'm going to sort that.

The driver and control panel still suck balls compared with the ones Nvidia put out for their cards, mind!
Click to expand...

Hi JRS,

I know this is way OT... :D but can you actually install **any** DX9.0c games under Wine with the ATI drivers?? Basically I am wondering if I am screwed because I only have an old X1950 Pro 512 PCIe card... Could only get HL2 to run in DX8 mode (no HDR, etc.) Lots of older games with an OpenGL switch would work fine of course. (Would like to see games developers producing games with OpenGL support... ideal world, blah, blah...)

Bob
 
Bob Wya Jnr said:
Hi JRS,

I know this is way OT... :D but can you actually install **any** DX9.0c games under Wine with the ATI drivers??
Click to expand...

I'll get back to you. I'll have to find a DX9.0c game in my library first....Red Alert 3 is a 9.0c game isn't it?
 
JRS said:
I'll get back to you. I'll have to find a DX9.0c game in my library first....Red Alert 3 is a 9.0c game isn't it?
Click to expand...

Oh great thanks! I can't try those newer ATI Catalyst drivers cause they no longer support the R5xx cards or earlier... :mad:

Roughly the transition was around the time frame of Doom 3 DX8 -> Far Cry DX9.0c (b? c with a patch I think)... RA3 will be DX9.0c/ DX10 I guess??

Bob
 
Bob, I can confirm that FlatOut (which requires 9.0c under Windows) installs and plays pretty much perfectly on the latest stable Wine release in Jaunty. I'll try RA3 when I get back from the pub :D
 
Hmm never thought about trying a game with Wine. I just assumed it would never work with the amount of DRM they slap on things these days. Might dig out RA3 over the weekend if I get time.

8.10 has been tip top so far. Wireless on resume is still a bit flakey but it always comes back to life with a bit of fiddling. Happy chap thus far. :)
 
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