Linux user's club

getthemax

bookduck, I was just having a look at Puppy and the synopsis on Wikpedia. It looks like a good starter to try out Linux, so I think I'll set up a boot CD and have a play around. The number of distributions is boggling!

ZootHornRollo

the number of distributions is very much a positive and a negative.


on one hand you have variety and a number of tailored solutions such as linuxmce or ubunutustudio. Some are great, some are usable and others are just plain hardwork. But they are all aimed at a certain group of users be they specialist or general.

one th eother hand, it can be very daunting for the first ime user.

imagine if everyone developing the various distros was pulling on the same rope and working on the one distro, how good would it be?

getthemax

ZootHornRollo wrote: »

imagine if everyone developing the various distros was pulling on the same rope and working on the one distro, how good would it be?

Yes, you'd end with with Windows :rotfl:

trythat

Thought I'd add myself to the club, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and main PC, using W2k on my eeepc at the moment, because the drivers for the touchscreen drivers are better, but probably go back to Ubuntu, when the have a good release of their new MID OS (touchscreen stuff is supposed to be better supported).
I run Virtualbox for my Virtualization, very nice and very fast. I have XP running under it, mainly to access the printer settings of my canon i865, and to transfer files over to my Samsung MP3 player (MTP), not tried my HP scanner through VBox yet, but as its not supported by HP or Sane yet.

Someone wanted to sync their Samsung player, I'm pretty sure Banshee and Rhythmbox both sync MTP kit, I just prefer XP as it uses it as a storage device, ideal for Podcasts.

I'm no expert with Linux, still spend a lot of time googling , but I'll try and help if I can.

spud17

Just switched from PCLOS to Mint and am impressed so far. PCLOS had become "untidy"with it's updated KDE.

I'd like to try the 3-D desktop, but my old on-board graphics aren't good enough.

It will have to be a PCI card (no AGP).

What's the most basic card that can do this?
Don't need to be able to play games.

fwor

Mint is just a repackage of Ubuntu, so anything that will run the Ubuntu DesktopEffects ~should~ work ok.

There's a pointer to a compatibility list here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DesktopEffects

spud17

Cheers, I realise Mint is a repackage, but it seems to work better than the last couple of Ubuntu distros.

Oops, seems to be a problem with your link.

fwor

spud17 wrote: »

Oops, seems to be a problem with your link.

My link works, but you're right, the pointer to the Gentoo wiki is broken.

Here's a minimum spec from Compiz (which is almost certainly what Mint uses):

Compiz will only work with graphic cards with at least 64 MB of memory, and whose drivers are capable of supporting the X Composite extension and the GL_EXT_texture_from_pixmap OpenGL extension. But even if the required extensions are not supported by your card's driver, software solutions such as Xgl may be able to provide them.

My cheapo £10 Nvidia card runs Compiz no probs, provided you accept the proprietary drivers, which is Ok by me.

spud17

fwor wrote: »

My link works, but you're right, the pointer to the Gentoo wiki is broken.

Here's a minimum spec from Compiz (which is almost certainly what Mint uses):

Compiz will only work with graphic cards with at least 64 MB of memory, and whose drivers are capable of supporting the X Composite extension and the GL_EXT_texture_from_pixmap OpenGL extension. But even if the required extensions are not supported by your card's driver, software solutions such as Xgl may be able to provide them.

My cheapo £10 Nvidia card runs Compiz no probs, provided you accept the proprietary drivers, which is Ok by me.

Brilliant, exactly the info I was looking for, it is Compiz.

My onboard graphics are 32mb S3 prosavage ddr, so no chance.

I know nothing about graphics cards, so please could you point me to where I can get hold of something similar to your "cheapo £10 nvidia", or even let me know a model number.

Thanks R

fwor

Hmmm... actually, when I bought the current card, PCI and AGP cards were cheap.

It seems that now most of the volume is in PCI-e, and everything else is loads more expensive. You might have to end up paying a lot more - perhaps £30 for a Geforce 6200 based one branded PNY, for example.

You might be better off asking for a PCI graphics card on Freecycle and see what turns up. I personally wouldn't bother paying £30 for desktop effects to work - I turned it off on all my desktops, as it doesn't add anything functional that I would want.