mfillpot wrote:

Tony,
It sounds like someone wants to start a flame war.

dixiedancer wrote:

You're recommending Mandriva for a [i]NETBOOK!?[/i] Did she say what distro she was using? Are you here to help or just to push your favorite distro?

mfillpot wrote:

The issue is not with mandriva, only with the fact that you referred the user to switch to it before trying to find out which distro they were using, which does not address the how to fix the issues with the installed distro as the user requested.

Tammy wrote:

I don't know anything about Linux.

OK. All that aside, let's assume Tammy has a netbook and it is an Asus eeepc. Let's now workout that Xandros is installed on it from this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC#Linux_on_the_Eee_PC
Wikipedia entry and then let's address the fact that there is no Xandros forum container on this site.

Zanpaktou wrote:

If Tammy knew what distribution she was using, she would have posted in the respective distribution specific section.

Mandriva 2008.1 (April): 1st natively 100% Eee-friendly Distribution

No wonder this forum is practically empty.
Bye.

dixiedancer wrote:

[b]Zanpaktou wrote:[/b]
[quote]If you have a usb stick or a cd burner, you can re-install something good right now :

[url=http://www2.mandriva.com/]Mandriva

You're recommending Mandriva for a NETBOOK!? Did she say what distro she was using? Are you here to help or just to push your favorite distro?

You should not need to completely re-install your OS. It may only be the web browser or flash that needs repair. Most netbook distros have a package manager (Synaptic, for example, on Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, Mepis, PCLinuxOS, etc) that you can use to check the status of all your programs. Sometimes a re-installation of your web browser and maybe Java or Adobe flash player fixes that facebook thingy.

When you write in again, tell us what distro you already have installed (and tell us about your netbook) and others who know your distro and your hardware can help you fix it.

Not to worry!

Robin[/quote]

Hi Robin,
I'm not quite sure about your agenda or what drove you to make that post but you are obviously quite confused and not here to offer any useful advice accept to try to discredit those who do.

Tammy's post clearly states that she has purchased an ASUS notebook. Not an ASUS netbook (Link there so that you can learn what a netbook is, alright.)
Irrespective of your mistake, Mandriva is actually geared towards ease of use and is optimised for netbooks anyway. Mandriva actually use EEEpcs in their development and testing. There are pictures of the development team doing so on their flickr page.
You can learn about why Mandriva is netbook friendly here.
But you should also just in general learn more about Linux, other Linux distributions and get that chip about Mandriva off your shoulder.

Just for your information. And this is important because you obviously either HATE Mandriva or want to push some other distro, I do not use Mandriva Linux. I used to use Mandrake Linux and it was in fact the very first distribution I installed when I first started using Linux over ten years ago.
I recommend Mandriva because it is the most user friendly Linux distribution available. Period. There is absolutely no way you can convince me otherwise. Like I say, I have used Linux for over ten years and I KNOW which distribution is the easiest for new users to install and use.
I myself find Fedora easy to use and I personally use that distribution because of lack of hard disk space to install NixOs on. What I use is irrelevant to answer this question. I would not go and recommend either of my first choice distributions to new users who are not familiar with Linux, simply because of how terrible packagekit is and NixOs is a development distribution for very experienced Linux users.
Neither of those distributions are ideally suited to new users and that is why I say Mandriva.
I will not recommend Ubuntu or OpenSuSe for ethical reasons. Please learn about Mark Shuttleworth and his pumping millions into Ubuntu to try to buy/build a Linux distribution.
Also learn about Novell's patent deals with Microsoft and how they are faring as a result of it, to at least maybe understand my educated ethical choices.

Robin, you unfortunately show your lack of hands on experience.
Many new machines which come with Linux pre-installed are shipping with 3rd rate quality distributions, which have been stripped down and "Tinkered" With to make them :
Extremely difficult to update.
Lacking in full software repositories.
Without the option to install (Should you own a license) Software which allows you to encode or decode DVDs or h.264 video.
Not to contain a package manager.

Asus are one of these manufacturers. If you had ever seen any of these new machines hands on, you would be aware of that and would realise that reloading it off a backup CD doesn't improve anything and how would Tammy re-install any software if the package manager has been removed from her distro? Either by accident or by Asus. She wouldn't be able to.

So installing a full user friendly Linux distribution is the most helpful advice because it is easy to do. Just boot off the disc and let the installer do the work.
If Tammy knew what distribution she was using, she would have posted in the respective distribution specific section.

I am worried. I'm worried that there are more people like yourself, Robin offering advice like your last post and that others are even listening to you.
Please don't offer help if you are going to offer nothing of use at all. There certainly is a place here for people who make an effort and actually know what they are talking about but trying to discredit others with bogus advice is not how to make friends and influence people. Just take a minute to think first next time. OK?

craig2168, please don't SHOUT. It's rude. Please respect the netiquette.

Tammy, (If you are reading this) I'm sorry that this post doesn't offer any solution to your problem. My previous post does.

Thanks,
Tony

If you have a usb stick or a cd burner, you can re-install something good right now :

Installing Mandriva Linux
Mandriva

Alternatively, you can purchase an install dvd or usb stick from the Mandriva on line store.

The problem with game development on the whole is that the market is saturated with game development startups and corporations which develop for console first, then the PC market. Seeing how the games console market is so huge.
Game developers are (Usually unless they are getting ripped off) Highly paid individuals because they are extremely skilled programmers. Because games are difficult things to program, they need to be.
The problem comes from Microsoft. They ship the xbox 360 which you might have heard of and they also ship the directX api.
Now the cross platform api is opengl and while unlike directX, it is not a full multimedia api, it is much more powerful and easier to develop using (Apparently.) DirectX does not run very well on Linux. It can be done but using wine and not very well.
To develop games on the PC platform for Windows, the games are written using directX and the same is true for the xbox. Now Microsoft offers kick backs to game developers that use directX instead of opengl and over time game developers have accepted the directX api (Wrongly) To write their games.
Because they have chosen directX and directX is not a cross-platform api (Which is by Microsoft's design to lock vendors into their software technology, just as they did with Internet Explorer) Major game releases are very rarely cross platform.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

With Android and iphone (iPad) OSes supporting opengl games, opengl is becoming popular again and we will see many developers start to get it right and popular retail games will come to Linux in the future because of it but it will be a bit of a wait.

I would love to see google enter the games market, offer sponsorship to game developers and try to trounce Microsoft in that market using android. Googlebox, or Google playbox games console anyone?
I will not be surprised if that happens. Their appengine would be a perfect platform for it if they relaxed and made sane it's licensing terms.

I've always wanted to write a game, maybe an interactive puzzle game like monkey island, etc and if I get my skills a bit sharper using qt and ruby, I may well do. But it's just a thought right now.
Game programming is hard.

Hi Rovanion,
The chances of your card working are quite slim unfortunately. Sorry to break it to you. By the looks of it, your adapter maybe has a version of the wireless chip which the driver cannot operate corectly on or you are experiencing the locking bug on smp systems (If you have more than one processor core.)
If you have followed these instructions :
http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/Distribution_list/Debian
And the output from dmesg is that, I don't think it's going to work for you.

I can only recommend that you buy a Linux compatible usb wireless adapter instead. Anything with a RaLink chip inside it will definitely work. Like this one :
Tenda Wireless-G USB Adapter - (W541U 54M Wireless USB Adapter)

Blame Texas instruments for not engaging in Linux development. But then again, it's their loss and/or stupidity for not doing so.:silly:
Lesson learned. Don't buy hardware from vendors which do not engage in Linux development. Shun them instead. :laugh:

Great! I don't know what that is!
Please lspci your Linux box and post it back. With that information I can help you. I can use the correct info to work out if there is a module which works for your wireless card and hopefully point you to instructions on how to make it operational.

ti acx 111 is not enough information. Just reposting exactly the same thing does not help me to help you. If you would like the chance that your wireless card will work eventually to improve, please just do as I have politely asked.
Otherwise, I cannot help you.

Thanks,
Tony

Hi emmet-the-cat,
Open a console, type :

lspci -v

Press enter and then copy and paste the output here please.
Using that information, I will then be able to point you towards a working method to make your card work, if indeed there is a driver available.

Thanks,
Tony

Thanks mfillpot,
An update on this, it looks like Daniel Vetter and Chris Wilson have been working on this for some time, with some limited success and separately, away from any of the many reports about 855gm locking/freezing/errors on the freedesktop bugzilla.
It appears that they may have achieved a useable patch to the very latest kernel code :
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27187
Currently, this :
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=34824
Is the most recent proposed patch for testing.

Lets just hope it works or they eventually get it working. :blink:

No one's really mentioned Fedora and as a Fedora user currently, I'd have to say that with isps currently throttling traffic and giving everyone raw deals on their Internet speeds, Fedora has a delta rpm system which works with yum.
What that means is that if you update using Fedora, the amount of bandwidth you use will be considerably less than any other distribution because for most updates yum will only download what is needed for the update instead of (Like most other distributions) The entire software package.
I'm often seeing a 40% reduction in size in downloads using yum and delta rpms.
(I suspect that OpenSuSe's Zypper does something similar.)
If you are not on an unlimited Internet contract, it is something to take into serious consideration. Updating your OS to the current versions of installed software is very important to fix security bugs and software regressions to prevent your machine being exploited in the wild.

If you are doing any kind of software development (C, C++, php, ruby, phython, etc) Fedora rawhide (Development version) Is certainly a worth while consideration.
Updating rawhide frequently provides you with the very latest versions of software, it allows you to build software using the latest dependencies, you can also get involved with bug reporting (Should you find any) And actually give something back to the Fedora project in the way of testing.

Pros :
Delta rpms mean less bandwidth for upgrades
Excellent communication channels
Actively developed
Apparently twice as many users a it's nearest rival (Ubuntu.)
The project is supported by the largest enterprise Linux vendor on the planet. Redhat.
Linus uses Fedora (According to what I've read.)

Cons :
Packagekit : You are better off learning yum from the command line. Packagekit is absolutely awful. People like me just uninstall it first thing after an install.
It is a bleeding edge distribution, so you can be faced with bugs and unstable software but it's your job to report anything like that on the redhat bugzilla (For some like me, it's not an issue because serious Fedora specific regressions are quite rare.)
It's more of a gnome centric distribution but kde sc versions and packages are available. (I actually use kde sc in Fedora and it is quite good.)
Uses rpm : The official rpm community project was forked a while ago but Redhat refuses to recognise it. Rpm is also flawed like all the other common Linux package formats in that a roll back or entire system roll back is impossible. Creating Rpms for distribution is also an extremely steep learning curve, one which has been detrimental to the Linux community for a long time time IMO. Not such a problem if you have no intention of tinkering under the hood.

All in all Fedora is a very strong choice for everyone but particularly for software developers and those who want the latest package versions.

I think the :

You don't give newbies Beta software!

Hi all,
I'm a Fedora user but I believe this problem effects most Linux distributions. So I thought I'd make it clear to everyone with the effected hardware.

Basically, the Intel Linux developers have decided to screw with the i915 gpu Linux kernel driver which used to work for the Intel 855GM or Intel 85x graphics chips. They have decided to drop ums (user mode setting) for the driver without providing a working kms (Kernel mode setting) alternative.
So in short, if you have an Intel 85x graphics card (Extremely common on slightly older Pentium M Centrino Notebooks) You have practically zero chance of using any current distribution release which uses a current version of the Linux kernel and be able to use any kind of working xserver (Say for instance to use a desktop, kde sc, gnome, xfce, etc.)

The last working Fedora kernel version is :
2.6.31.1-56.fc12.i686

I believe that any of the 2.6.30.x kernels should work on any distribution.
The recent Ubuntu LTS support release does not suffer from the problem because the Ubuntu developers identified the issue and marked it as a regression. Unfortunately, upstream are either not interested in fixing or reverting the regression or are having no real luck fixing it.
(From some bug tracker hunting, it looks like a combination of the two with the person involved in pushing the regression completely ignoring the problem.)

This issue has been known for and was reported over six months ago now. The developer who pushes the updates to the i915 driver was told that the commits he was about to push were a regression but still he pushed them and it was merged anyway.

The problem manifests itself as a complete lock up when the x server has started or shortly after the xserver has started.
No magic sysrq key combination or ctrl + alt + backspace key combination achieves any kind of escape from the lock up and the only solution is to power down the machine manually by holding down the power button.

So if you do own a machine which contains an Intel 85x graphics chip, you may as well either buy a new machine without Intel graphics to replace it or run an old distribution on it (And hope that it is ever fixed. Which seems pretty unlikely at the moment.)
I myself have one of these machines and have now learned the lesson the hard way, to never again buy a machine which contains Intel graphics hardware to try to use in conjunction with the Linux kernel. I advise others to do the same.