This OS has some issues with drivers more than any ive seen

[festher]

i need to vent my frustration because this OS is the buggist software ever made...

every 4 year i grow bored with windows and even i have no clue what to do with a linux desktop i install it anyway. i got a suse 10.2 and installed it with dual boot on my T60P. like all the other times things run easily until something is required from me. i read the installation guide on lenovo and saw i only needed to do a few things install my firegl v5200. i got the development thing installed and the C/C++ thing and began the driver installation. Of course i ran into problems the minute i tried to write the commands from the guide and ofcourse the guide does not mention anything about what you need to do if this or that goes wrong because what error should they write about?? from my newbie point of view they would have to write a 10 gb text file to cover all the errors that could happen.

Anyway i got some sh1t and tried to google on the error, got a little further and well. linux is just like it was 4 years ago when i tried installing a geforce in mandrake or 8 years ago when i tried installing some other gfx in some other weird distribution.

Every time you google you find a newbie asking and a text-fanboi answering "well it sounds like..... bla bla slash bin bla var and etc" and all you can do (cus u dont understand jacksht what this guy is on about, is to copy/paste his commands and prey because your already on thin ice.

i reached the point i reach every time, Linux boot until its going "login:" and i know it can no longer start KDE or X or whatever its called. just sitting there staring into the stupid lines of endless text, thinking... "what am i doing in this OS, it cant even survive a gfx install or recover from a newbie trying to install it".

i might try in 4 years again but all its "stability" and "performance" its so full of bugs and lag the easiness of windows. ffs my 4 year old daughter can launch wow and level a char to 3 and all she ever tried was my cell phone. ive been working with windows and servers and cisco for 12 years and i cant even install a GFX in suse.

Thx for listing.

p.s kde is ogly as hell compared to vista

[kulivontot]

Try this.
Or Here.
There are plenty of resources on installing all sorts of different variations of linux. For the most part, I agree with you, linux is too buggy and hard to get used to for newbies (like myself). However, I think that we are lucky in the fact that there are a large number of linux enthusiasts who happen to use Thinkpads, making hardware issues a lot easier to sort out.

[e_tank]

i need to vent my frustration because this OS is the buggist software ever made...

every 4 year i grow bored with windows and even i have no clue what to do with a linux desktop i install it anyway. i got a suse 10.2 and installed it with dual boot on my T60P. like all the other times things run easily until something is required from me. i read the installation guide on lenovo and saw i only needed to do a few things install my firegl v5200. i got the development thing installed and the C/C++ thing and began the driver installation. Of course i ran into problems the minute i tried to write the commands from the guide and ofcourse the guide does not mention anything about what you need to do if this or that goes wrong because what error should they write about?? from my newbie point of view they would have to write a 10 gb text file to cover all the errors that could happen.

Anyway i got some sh1t and tried to google on the error, got a little further and well. linux is just like it was 4 years ago when i tried installing a geforce in mandrake or 8 years ago when i tried installing some other gfx in some other weird distribution.

Every time you google you find a newbie asking and a text-fanboi answering "well it sounds like..... bla bla slash bin bla var and etc" and all you can do (cus u dont understand jacksht what this guy is on about, is to copy/paste his commands and prey because your already on thin ice.

i reached the point i reach every time, Linux boot until its going "login:" and i know it can no longer start KDE or X or whatever its called. just sitting there staring into the stupid lines of endless text, thinking... "wtf am i doing in this [censored] OS, it cant even survive a gfx install or recover from a newbie trying to install it".

i might try in 4 years again but all its "stability" and "performance" its so full of bugs and lag the easiness of windows. ffs my 4 year old daughter can launch wow and level a char to 3 and all she ever tried was my cell phone. ive been working with windows and servers and cisco for 12 years and i cant even install a GFX in suse.

Thx for listing.

p.s kde is ogly as hell compared to vista

linux boot camp, only the strong survive . in all seriousness sucks that it didn't work out, hope you have better luck next time

[festher]

your first link is usefull for most i guess but it dosent fix the gfx

The second link makes me feel like banging my head to a wall - i mean its 1000's of pages going "if this or that try type"bla/bla/bla/bla.0.blabla.bla - if you see X or Y its because.....

i dont see X nor Y so what now?

just a lot of weird words like "mesa opengl softlink kernel-update compile lib"

i think im a perfect example of a new user coming from windows and imo. the SLDE 10 project as a challenge to windows and desktop utterly failed - no windows users will ever put them through all this pain to save $100 for a copy of windows. The only thing this bunch of [censored] code is challenging is the linux developers and fanatics. They will NEVER win over the windows users trust if they cant even fix the [censored] gfx install without having to spend DAYS reading about console commands.

also a terrible thing is the download/patch/install procedure... im never really sure when i program is only downloaded or installed or applied to some configuration or what step im at... this procedure needs to be a flow not 40 steps.

i feel im doing the developers unfinished job - if Lenovo put this crap on their notebooks they are crazy

[festher]

if i should try and be a little constructive in my criticism i can tell you what is going on. i do as told on the lenovo page and this is the error i get when installing:

**************************************************************
Building/installation of fglrx kernel module failed! Try again
by calling "/usr/X11R6/bin/fglrx-kernel-build.sh" manually.
**************************************************************

if i goggle this i get a very long link i decided to delete again. i wasent able to shorten it on this forum nor am i able to make italic text work to structure the post a little. [i]TEST[/i] meh!

[i]The problem is, /usr/src/linux is not a "real" directory, it is a symlink to another directory in /usr/src. It should be your running kernel, but it is not -- in your case it is a newer kernel than the one you are using. Look at the version numbers -- 2.6.16.21-0.25 is what you've got in /usr/src/linux, but 2.6.16.13-4 is what you're running, according to uname. When the ATI driver is compiling its module headers, it is looking for the header files for 2.6.16-13, but they aren't there. Something isn't right somewhere. Are you sure all software updates have been applied, and the system has been restarted afterward?

If so, there are a few different approaches to fixing this situation. First you should check to see if the 2.6.16-21 kernel is compiled and ready to go (but not being used). When you boot the system and get to the SUSE boot menu, are there multiple kernel versions to choose from?[/i]

i dont know nothing about kernel or updates or compiling modules, obviously... i got SUSE 10.2 and the driver is for 10 - maybe thats the problem. why the hell cant they make things right instead of this babysitting stuff all the way? in 1996 or so i installed a voodoo 1 card in win95, took 5 minutes... wtf is this!! gee !

[jdhurst]

I am somewhat confused as to why you can say in one single breath that you know nothing about Linux, but SuSE is a buggy OS.

I have a SuSE 9 machine, but it was too big for me, and it required a bit too much mucking about to make it work well (not bugs, just different methodology). So I put it aside and went to Ubuntu. I have an Ubuntu 5 machine on my T41 that works well, is easy to use and is small. I have an Ubuntu 6 machine on my NetVista desktop that also works, but is bigger than I want.

May I suggest you consider Ubuntu. I prefer to help people solve their problems with what they have, but in this case, I think Ubuntu might be a better choice for you.
... JD Hurst

[festher]

jd, every time a windows noob like me ask a linux user what to try they will swear they are using the perfect distribution. every time you ask you will get a new answer. this is one of the biggest problem with linux only being installed on very few desktops as compared to windows. The more different versions, kernels, drivers, [censored]... the less trust and the less chance winning the hearts of new users.

no i wont download, burn and install ubuntu to get your help, but thanks for the offer.

The only reason for me to try linux is the good stuff i heard about how intuitive suse 10 is and that lenovo had made a deal to get the OS on their laptops. That should provide some support for me but im just stucked at the [censored] up GL and GFX installation that always have troubled me and 1000s others.

if linux was ONE distribution and ONE version where everyone worked on to make this ONE OS better, there would be millions more running linux. this way with tons of dist, some dieing some evolving, some "stable" some not, only few will convert.

And watch me and this [censored]? im on my second day trying to install a freakin ATI card in one of the latest and most forgiven distribution.

seriously...

[BruisedQuasar]

Sorry but I have never thought of Linux Core as buggy. You do need to learn quite a lot to switch to Linux full time, but the learning curve shrinks every year.

A great Linux distro for newbies are the Ubuntu distros. An excellent pain free way to find what Linux Distro is best for you is to try out Linux distro Live CD versions which run from CD & memory. An area where Linux is weak, and I have had no luck getting any distro group to heed my input about this, is terminology.

To become a Linux power user is difficult but no difficult than it was to become computer literate before the brilliant Xerox development group created the mouse and the GUI (icon driven instead of command line driven O/S) and Apple adopted it for their MAC line. Microsoft sort of keeps users rather ignorant of what drives a computer. For one thing, MS never explains that since its MS-DOS days their so-called Windows O/Ses are never named properly. For instance, Windows 2000 and XP are not the operating systems. The operating system of each is Windows NT. Vista is not an O/S either. The Vista O/S is Windows Server, 2003 I believe.

MS is run with a monopoly mentality. Increasingly, profit is held above consumer satisfaction & prices are nuts, basic tendencies of all monopolies, which is the major reason monopoly practices are illegal in America.

If only we could get a western government to enforce their anti-monopoly law. Consequently, MS does not make its desktop and Operating system modular. In the Linux world, desktops are not embedded with the O/S, so users can choose between desktops. KDE(oriented toward Home use) & Gnome(oriented toward business) are the most popular. The development of Linux Core (the O/S) and the many distros are designed and programmed by different groups. For instance, the Ubuntu Linux Project and philosophy is different from that of Xandros Linux.

It has been my position for a few years that a general macho attitude toward computing that far too many Linux enthusiasts harbor does much to keep Linux from being much more widely used and thus serious competition for Microsoft. By now, a project group should have made a desktop that mimics Windows desktops. In other words, the average (not power user) user should be able to EASILY slide over to a version of Linux. By now, there should be a linux distro that has a desktop program that DOES NOT require a user to know ANY odd ball Linux or Unix terms like "Mount" or face a symbol like '\' for a drive.

There is absolutely no technical reason that this late in the game a user cannot get a shell that allows him familiar and more mneumonic terms like "C:" drive "D" drive, "Install", "Delete", etc.

Just as Windows and Mac users do not need to know anything about command line entries, there should be a serious Linux distro that does the same. I must admit that I laugh out loud each time a new version of Xandros, [censored] Small Linux or Linspire, Red Hat, is promoted as being "Easy", "User Friendly". Ha. I would love to see the average PC user get wifi going or download and install a Linux program, or even install a simple driver for a external USB device.

I suspect Sharp Linux must be truly user friendly considering nearly every Japanese and a lot of other Asian students own and use a Sharp Linux Zaurus handheld PC. Unfortunately, Sharp Linux is in Japanese & Chinese. There is an English Module but it is very limited. My Japanese exchange students tell me that it is rare for them to pay for a program, as most free GNU Linux programs Old & New work in their Zaurus.

Linux distros have their downsides but being buggy is certainly not one of them. I prefer my free Linux productivity programs such as OpenOffice & GIMP for their stability & Reliability. By the way, Linux is prefered over Windows for corporate & science servers and for Internet servers. What keeps Linux from near exclusive dominance in the corporate and Internet server world is the serious shortage of Linux fluent computer professionals.

Young people interested in becoming a computer professional may want to consider mastering Unix & Linux. The pay is higher due to the shortage of Linux professionals.

[festher]

i have no idea if i said the kernel it self was buggy, if i did i think i meant the programs to install. by install i mean every [censored] part of the procedure (download, unpack, clean up, distribute files, configure, enable and whats not) in windows we have ONE word, in linux this can be 6-7 steps... i cant even scroll up to see hat i wrote because it takes me 10seconds to scroll up one page due to my gfx - my letters are as big as houses and it just feel terrible.

2000, 2003, NT4, XP, Vista.. its all version names. no one running windows concern them self with what kernel they use (NT) and i dont see any reason why they should. Now if you start changing kernel version every day like socks and making new drivers only compatible with specific kernels... it just become a huge software circus like now.

anyway, i totally agree with you - after THIS many years, programs and distributions. linux is still so much trouble for new users is amazing. The graphic thing is a huge part i think.

If a company should convert their 50-100 users to linux, the first thing they need is a staff that can handle the support, if 9 of 10 technicians always come to work saying "omg linux sux" it wont happen. the last thing a company wanna do is to implement a OS that dosent even have the support from those whos gonna to install and support it, it will never happen... whats the first thing a new user do after installing linux.. you enter KDE and see your resolution is 640x480 or something, even if KDE looked good after first boot, which it dosent, it sure becomes alot worse in 640x480. The first thing every linux noob will do is to put all their effort in getting their nice 1600x res back.

Now i dont know much about other problems in Linux because i never got any further, but every time ive given linux a chance ive spend 3 days getting it done and uninstalled the 3rd day. it simply makes no sense to me it has to be such a big problem for this "amazing OS" to do something THIS [censored] easy, something you can do in windows BLINDFOLDED. if every new user got a nice high res and 3d cube desktop, they would have a whole new kinda talk about linux at work. but 99 of 100 end up in not even being able to freaking load the GUI and are forced to reinstall or format.

who the hell cares if you have to reboot after a hardware/driver installation if it works, compared to THIS?

oh well.. a friend of mine is coming over, but even if he makes it work i consider this a huge loss, for linux. its just not for desktops yet. install XP or vista and everything will work. A nice desktop with watch and pictures and music will bid you welcome, polished and perfect. im not even gonna mention monopoly because i dont even see any other serious desktops on the market. Linux has to step up ALOT to be even a small player, limit the massive list of distributions and focused their force on a few

[tomh009]

My big issue with Linux hasn't been the install process -- I have installed enough OSs of every stripe over the past 20 years that I can deal with it. And I wasn't looking for a GUI of any kind, but a server, which Linux should be able to do very well.

But along the lines of this thread, the problem is that there is no organization in the Linux world -- and, as a result, it's near-impossible to find out what hardware is supported with any given installation. Hardware compatibility lists simply don't exist -- not for Fedora, Red Hat, SuSE or Ubuntu (after that I gave up looking).

So you end up downloading, burning a DVD, starting the install -- only to find out that the driver for the RAID controller is not there. Repeat until you get sick and tired and decide to run Solaris instead.

[mojito]

Well, every OS requires some time to get used to, including windows. But most poeple "grew up" with windows, they now know it for years. Getting used to linux can be painful at first, but after some time you get used to it, it just requires time and effort. If you really want to work with it, you'll manage.

But I have to say, some distros lack proper documentation (or it comes in the form of a 2000 pages 80$ book). Choosing the distribution that is right for you is the most important part when you're getting started with linux. Nobody can tell you which one will be best for you, you just have to figure it out for yourself. Many people recommend ubuntu these days, I recommend gentoo if someone wants to really learn how to work with linux. But as I said above: In the end you have to decide for yourself. Choice is not easy, but you do have a choice. What choice do you have in the Windows-world?

About the problem with the driver for your graphics card: You have to get used to multiple versions of the linux kernel. /usr/src/linux is a symbolic link to whatever kernel you want to compile modules (like the one for your graphics card) against. If you're running version a and compile it against version b it won't be much use for you on version a. You have to figure out how to compile the module against the version of the kernel you're currently running. It is the distribution's responsibility to supply proper documentation on how you can do that. If SUSE doesn't, than I would recommend trying something else.

Finding the right drivers for your hardware can be painful, I agree. But in 99% of the cases, all you have to do is identify the hardware, a little research on the internet or a look into the kernel configuration is all you need.

[festher]

its kinda working now..

we installed the driver from ATI's homepage and i got a nice resolution and better performance. actually it made 6000 in glxgears. this was in KDE - the 3d acc button is greyed out so 3d dosent work.

X crashed several times and my friend had to work with the conf manually - something about the device being written twice in xorg.conf so he had to manually edited the file so X would start again.

we then installed gnome and we had to reinstall the driver and had some problems which my friends fixed over a couple of hours or so. its still not using the right names in yast and performance in glxgears dropped to 2600...

we cant enable 3d, for some reason its greyed out, so no cube.

he showed me "crossover" and how i could installed windows programs on my linux. "installing windows program IN linux" - but spend 2 hours or more so far getting the resolution to 1400x1050


just checked Sax2 - cards and graphics:

Card: VESA Framebuffer graphics
Monitor: ATI

i assume the right thing would be "card- ati-somthing" and monitor "LEN something". heh..

[tomh009]

(...) You have to figure out how to compile the module against the version of the kernel you're currently running. It is the distribution's responsibility to supply proper documentation on how you can do that. If SUSE doesn't, than I would recommend trying something else.

Finding the right drivers for your hardware can be painful, I agree. But in 99% of the cases, all you have to do is identify the hardware, a little research on the internet or a look into the kernel configuration is all you need.

Yeah, finding a driver that someone somewhere has written and building it and linking it into the kernel can work. Assuming that you can get the system running in the first place (if you can't boot off the RAID array then it's a non-starter) and you can identify the right source for the driver. Not my idea of fun, though.

And there are choices between Linux and Windows, too. The FreeBSD project has better coordination and documentation (including hardware compatibility lists!) while still being open source and providing lots of application compatibility. It even runs Linux apps ...

Solaris isn't open source, but it is free, and Sun will support it. Device support is more limited, but very well documented.

[festher]

Now it works and it works really nice. i found a description from novell that helped.

i still get a greyed out 3d acceleration in KDE/Yast but it must be working anyway. im back on 6100 FPS in glxgears and my desktop is spinning like a charm. also the minimizing got a nice effect now.

with crossover ill be able to run a few needed windows programs as well (outlook)

[Volker]

This whole mess is purely the fault of ATI and their binary-only blob driver. Now nobody but ATI can fix bugs in their crap and they aren't particularly quick about it.

I'm not replacing my T41 (Mobility 9000) with any newer T-series thinkpad as long as there is no open-sourced graphics driver available. When I installed FC6 it got every driver right, but with newer ATI chipsets you will live forever in driver hell.

[tomh009]

There is always the option of the GMA950 integrated graphics ...

[carbon_unit]

I don't have any problems with my T42 and it's 64MB ATI 9600 chipset but I am not running Suse.

[Volker]

There is always the option of the GMA950 integrated graphics ...

Very true, right now the only decent option. As far as I remember only in the X series, though. Can be a tad too small if you are 6'2 Certainly not available with the faster T-series thinkpads.

Volker

[andrewb]

I agree with the original poster's comments. I have got as far (after 6 months of late nights) in running Ubuntu on a dual boot T43p, but feel I will, forever, be hamstrung with my techie knowledge being borne out of Windows use over the past 10 years.

I am not so fixated by the free or open source aspect of Linux; I just want to stick two fingers up to Microsoft and, even more so, before I am "forced" into become a Vista victim over the next few years.

My conclusion thus far (albeit that it may be a testament to my own ignorance) is that the Linux community couldn't organise a p*ss up in a brewery when it comes to appealing to the ordinary PC user community. The best example I have encountered so far is Evolution. Any company (Novell or whomeover) who could develop Evolution to pitch directly against MS Outlook would have a guaranteed winner and break one of the strongest ties MS has on normal average types who have to stick with Windows. Yet, the development of the Windows compatible version of Evolution is so spectacularly poor that it's difficult to see why anyone bothered.

If just one community/distro etc., could get its act together and pitch directly and clearly to the MS Windows/Office types, I feel sure they would have a winner. Perhaps, a Mozilla Linux distro is what is needed ?

[iMav]

Every time you google you find a newbie asking and a text-fanboi answering "well it sounds like..... bla bla slash bin bla var and etc" and all you can do (cus u dont understand jacksht what this guy is on about, is to copy/paste his commands and prey because your already on thin ice.

And every time you use Google, you use their farm of Linux servers to do it.

I can definitely understand your frustration. But take any random laptop and buy a boxed copy of windows and you are going to have similar issues (even though the windows drivers are easy to find on the manufacturer's sites).

It is a bit unfair to judge a laptop with its bundled OS and custom drivers to a laptop with your attempt to install a random Linux distro. The fact that, with work and determination, a decently-functioning Linux installation can be achieved at all (given the current landscape) is pretty darned amazing if you ask me.

There ARE companies selling laptops with Linux preinstalled. And, believe it or not, just like your windows-preinstalled system, they work pretty darned well right out of the box!