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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

injurai

Banned
I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on my AMD triple-core laptop (which runs Win 8 like a charm) and was pretty disappointed by the performance. Any recommendations on how to fix this?

Linux does surprisingly awful on bleeding edge hardware. The drivers probably just aren't their tbh. You would be better off putting it on an older machine if you need it to run well.
 

Schlep

Member
Linux does surprisingly awful on bleeding edge hardware. The drivers probably just aren't their tbh. You would be better off putting it on an older machine if you need it to run well.
I've had Ubuntu running on a i5-2500k for almost a couple years now, and it's always been blazing.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Gnome Shell is nicely accelerated and has always been smoother than Unity on every PC I've tried them on.
 

peakish

Member
Geary finally has support for multiple email accounts in the Git version, very nice. Still a bit rough and still no search, but I'm switching to this for a while thanks to getting actual notifications.
 

Madtown_

Member
Geary finally has support for multiple email accounts in the Git version, very nice. Still a bit rough and still no search, but I'm switching to this for a while thanks to getting actual notifications.

What do you mean by this? I'm getting notifications in Cinnamon using Thunderbird, is there more to a notification Thunderbird and others don't offer?
 
I think Arch has lost me.

First they took all of the cool stuff they'd centralized into /etc/rc.conf (wherein it was incredibly easy to define hostname, set which daemons start on boot, set networking options, locale options, which external kernel modules are loaded, et al) and threw them into a seemingly random, chaotic mess of other files.

Now updates are randomly shifting where things are mounted. Instead of /media/foo, everything's suddenly in /run/media/myname/foo. Aargh, what was the point of introducing media in the first place!? That's it... I just want everything to go into /mnt from now on, like the good old days! ;_;

Mostly the rc.conf thing, though. That was arch's strongest differentiator in my mind, even moreso than the AUR.
 

zoku88

Member
Now updates are randomly shifting where things are mounted. Instead of /media/foo, everything's suddenly in /run/media/myname/foo. Aargh, what was the point of introducing media in the first place!? That's it... I just want everything to go into /mnt from now on, like the good old days! ;_;

What do you mean by this? Do you use some sort of auto-mounter? (or a DE, I guess.)

I don't think it automounts by default. At least, not for me (all of my mount points are manual.)
 

Massa

Member
I think Arch has lost me.

First they took all of the cool stuff they'd centralized into /etc/rc.conf (wherein it was incredibly easy to define hostname, set which daemons start on boot, set networking options, locale options, which external kernel modules are loaded, et al) and threw them into a seemingly random, chaotic mess of other files.

Now updates are randomly shifting where things are mounted. Instead of /media/foo, everything's suddenly in /run/media/myname/foo. Aargh, what was the point of introducing media in the first place!? That's it... I just want everything to go into /mnt from now on, like the good old days! ;_;

Mostly the rc.conf thing, though. That was arch's strongest differentiator in my mind, even moreso than the AUR.

The configuration files are just as easy to use - and better yet, consistent across different distributions. :)

The change to /run/media/user comes from udisks2.
 
The configuration files are just as easy to use - and better yet, consistent across different distributions. :)

Except that at least with networking you have to edit twice as many files. And while I like consistency, I would have vastly preferred for the consistency to go in the other direction, with other distros adopting rc.conf. I liked it a lot, and now zero distros use it.



The change to /run/media/user comes from udisks2.

Yeah, that's why I was focusing more on the first item with respect to arch (I should have instead mentioned my recent frustrations with the standard SD card arch boot image for the raspberry pi, checked against errors, which exploded into dependency hell on its very first pacman -Syu)

I think that with this issue I'm internally rebelling against the ever-increasing number of directory entries in the root filesystem. There are 20 now on my home machine, and it feels like the changes are adding complexity without actually making anything more usable. /run is for transient runtime files (so basically it's kind of what /tmp is supposed to be for), so it doesn't really fit to put mounts in there save that it's a conveniently present tmpfs. It just doesn't seem very well thought out.

But, ah well, perhaps later today I will read more deeply into the reasons for creating /srv and /run and so forth at the top level.
 

peakish

Member
What do you mean by this? I'm getting notifications in Cinnamon using Thunderbird, is there more to a notification Thunderbird and others don't offer?
Oh sorry, what I mean is that I've never liked any email client on Linux and instead always used webmail - until this, which does feel like it's cooperating well with Gmail. :)
 

Krelian

Member
Except that at least with networking you have to edit twice as many files. And while I like consistency, I would have vastly preferred for the consistency to go in the other direction, with other distros adopting rc.conf. I liked it a lot, and now zero distros use it.
What about Slackware? As far as I remember it's also used the BSD style init system. I can't imagine that they changed it there, too, and I vastly prefer it over any other init system as well.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
could you post any screenshots? Just curious how it looks :)

Ask and ye shall receive.

ibaphp1WewtJDQ.png


ibd1RpAWeDwsgy.png


iDG7Y0IRWsBoB.png


ibtmR9GML8tDrL.png


i3NxdNL19R9ht.png


iWn9UbbE7FKSW.png
 
Q

qizah

Unconfirmed Member
Anyone know how to install LibreOffice 4.0.0?

I'm following the steps from WebUpd8 but I'm stuck on the last part.

Code:
sudo dpkg -i /path/to/libreoffice/DEBS/*.deb

I saved the file on my Desktop.

Edit: Got it to work, but doesn't cooperate with the global menu in 12.10. Oh well.

Also nice layout Andrex, looks awesome :).
 
What about Slackware? As far as I remember it's also used the BSD style init system. I can't imagine that they changed it there, too, and I vastly prefer it over any other init system as well.

I haven't messed around with slack very much. I worked with FreeBSD for several years, but all I recall is that I edited /etc/rc.local a lot. I'll have to look up how their startup was handled.
 
I've been fumbling around with Ubuntu now for an hour or so and I just have no clue what I'm doing. Copying random stuff into the terminal to grab 32 bit binaries and shit. It's somewhat frustrating. I wish it was easier.

I just want steam to work for right now! One of you should just take over my computer and get it to work then give it back.
 
I've been fumbling around with Ubuntu now for an hour or so and I just have no clue what I'm doing. Copying random stuff into the terminal to grab 32 bit binaries and shit. It's somewhat frustrating. I wish it was easier.
Once you learn sudo add-apt-repository, sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get install, it won't seem random to you anymore.
 
I get this now:

Code:
james@ubuntu:~$ 
james@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
[sudo] password for james: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

And then I find this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/136394/cannot-install-ia32-libs

Do I literally just copy paste everything in the quoted grey parts in that order into the terminal and then it will work?
 

peakish

Member
I get this now:

Code:
james@ubuntu:~$ 
james@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
[sudo] password for james: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

And then I find this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/136394/cannot-install-ia32-libs

Do I literally just copy paste everything in the quoted grey parts in that order into the terminal and then it will work?
I didn't install it in Ubuntu, but a quick google and information about installing doesn't indicate that a lot of strange libraries should need to be installed. Have you just downloaded the steam.deb file from the web site and run it?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valve

Edit: Also, did you download and install the 32 or 64 bit version of Ubuntu? The guide doesn't say that any of those should have problems installing Steam, but this problem seems to be indicating that you need a 32 bit library for a 64 bit installation ("multiarch").
 
I didn't install it in Ubuntu, but a quick google and information about installing doesn't indicate that a lot of strange libraries should need to be installed. Have you just downloaded the steam.deb file from the web site and run it?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valve

Well I've tried. It comes up with this error: wrong architecture i386

Which sent me to this page: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/1/846939854206027636/

where some guy seemed to know what he was talking about and said this:

The failure is not caused by the wrong "packagemanagement tool", gdebi uses apt.....

What causes this "wrong architecture i386" problem?1.) You are trying to install a 32 application on a 64 bit operating system. 2.) The Ubuntudevs want to get ride of conflicts caused by building different packages for x64,x32,.......
Steam depends on the library-collection "ia32-libs", which is only available for the architecture i386.

SO:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 <----- Tells dpkg your computer can handle i386 binarys
sudo apt-get update <-------- refresh your lokal paketlist (now with i386 resp)

So I'm trying that now.

Simply opening it doesn't work in gdebi either.

Also, did you download and install the 32 or 64 bit version of Ubuntu? The guide doesn't say that any of those should have problems installing Steam, but this problem seems to be indicating that you need a 32 bit library for a 64 bit installation ("multiarch").

I'm guessing I grabbed 64. That's why I was trying to grab the 32 ones but as you can tell I have no clue what I'm doing.

Also is it normal for the software updater thing to take years to actually update?

Also (one last question) after I rebooted for the first time (I used a wubi, which is apparently the shit way to do it but oh well) it took me straight to Ubuntu without a boot menu. How do I get back to windows? And for the long term, how do I get the boot menu back at startup so that I can choose like all the example pictures said I would have?
 

peakish

Member
Well I've tried. It comes up with this error: wrong architecture i386

Which sent me to this page: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/1/846939854206027636/

where some guy seemed to know what he was talking about and said this:

So I'm trying that now.

Simply opening it doesn't work in gdebi either.
This all seems very strange to me for a couple of reasons. 64 bit Ubuntu still isn't "recommended" when downloading, but I've only ever seen it recommended these last years and haven't run into these problems since perhaps three years back or so with modern software. Steam is still in beta, but I'm surprised at why it shouldn't be immediately installable for 64 bit. I didn't have any problems at all installing this on my 64 bit Arch Linux (though I don't remember if it had to pull some extra libraries during installation, it's very possible - but it's an "unsupported" distribution so why should it be easier than a "supported" one, sigh...

I'm guessing I grabbed 64. That's why I was trying to grab the 32 ones but as you can tell I have no clue what I'm doing.

Also is it normal for the software updater thing to take years to actually update?
From my experience apt-get can be slow, but it shouldn't be a crawl if your computer is even reasonably modern.

I'm honestly not a big fan of recommending people to blindly copy and paste stuff into the terminal. Since I haven't done Steam on Ubuntu I can't help with that (hopefully somebody in this thread has, though!), but to get you sort of up to speed on what you're doing:

- dpkg is an installer for .deb packages. Like the poster said, you can apparently instruct this to accept i386 packages instead of only x86-64 by the command posted above. Never had to do that myself.
- apt-get is a program which gets .deb packages from repositories and (I think?) then calls dpkg to install them.
- apt-get update will update the available package lists in the repositories.
- apt-get install foobarwill, of course, install the given package foobar if available.
- sudo gives root privilegies to a command.

Basically, whenever I run into install problems I first make sure that all of my installed packages are up to date by running
sudo apt-get update to update the list of available packages and versions, then
sudo apt-get upgrade to upgrade all out-of-date packages.
There are GUI frontends for this, but they just call these commands. Have you made sure that everything is updated before doing this? Doing that solves most of my installation issues whenever I have them.

That's about the only advice I can give right now, except that if you're really dying to try this out to download and install the 32 bit version of Ubuntu instead.

Finally, do keep in mind that it's still in beta :p That said I'm very surprised that these problems occur. Hope you find a solution!

Also (one last question) after I rebooted for the first time (I used a wubi, which is apparently the shit way to do it but oh well) it took me straight to Ubuntu without a boot menu. How do I get back to windows? And for the long term, how do I get the boot menu back at startup so that I can choose like all the example pictures said I would have?
Haven't tried Wubi in years, as far as I remember it automatically gave me a menu letting me pick between Windows and Ubuntu on boot. If you don't get the option of booting into Windows at all right now I'd be more worried about that than Steam right now, lol. I can't help much with this - if your motherboard uses UEFI maybe that's causing an issue? Although googling makes it seem like the known issues more are getting Ubuntu to boot through it than Windows...
 
This all seems very strange to me for a couple of reasons. 64 bit Ubuntu still isn't "recommended" when downloading, but I've only ever seen it recommended these last years and haven't run into these problems since perhaps three years back or so with modern software. Steam is still in beta, but I'm surprised at why it shouldn't be immediately installable for 64 bit. I didn't have any problems at all installing this on my 64 bit Arch Linux (though I don't remember if it had to pull some extra libraries during installation, it's very possible - but it's an "unsupported" distribution so why should it be easier than a "supported" one, sigh...


From my experience apt-get can be slow, but it shouldn't be a crawl if your computer is even reasonably modern.

I'm honestly not a big fan of recommending people to blindly copy and paste stuff into the terminal. Since I haven't done Steam on Ubuntu I can't help with that (hopefully somebody in this thread has, though!), but to get you sort of up to speed on what you're doing:

- dpkg is an installer for .deb packages. Like the poster said, you can apparently instruct this to accept i386 packages instead of only x86-64 by the command posted above. Never had to do that myself.
- apt-get is a program which gets .deb packages from repositories and (I think?) then calls dpkg to install them.
- apt-get update will update the available package lists in the repositories.
- apt-get install foobarwill, of course, install the given package foobar if available.
- sudo gives root privilegies to a command.

Basically, whenever I run into install problems I first make sure that all of my installed packages are up to date by running
sudo apt-get update to update the list of available packages and versions, then
sudo apt-get upgrade to upgrade all out-of-date packages.
There are GUI frontends for this, but they just call these commands. Have you made sure that everything is updated before doing this? Doing that solves most of my installation issues whenever I have them.

That's about the only advice I can give right now, except that if you're really dying to try this out to download and install the 32 bit version of Ubuntu instead.

Finally, do keep in mind that it's still in beta :p That said I'm very surprised that these problems occur. Hope you find a solution!

Thanks a lot for that, at least I understand what the dpkg is and some of the basic commands and why sudo is at the front of everything. Apparently there is a 64 bit version in the works for the client but valve is working in valve time and it's not ready, so yes it is a true beta :p

Edit: Yeah I thought about worrying about that windows booting issue but I figure I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I'll keep trying and figuring things out. I think I'm finally making some progress though so hopefully it works here soon. I think another problem is I grabbed .10 instead of .4 and it's having some slowness issues so I should probably roll that back when/if I grab the 32 bit one instead.
 

peakish

Member
Thanks a lot for that, at least I understand what the dpkg is and some of the basic commands and why sudo is at the front of everything. Apparently there is a 64 bit version in the works for the client but valve is working in valve time and it's not ready, so yes it is a true beta :p
It's very strange to me since my experience with the beta is that it's very, very stable and easy as hell to get running on a 64 bit Arch linux installation - Ubuntu having problems doing the same just seems strange, haha. But I suppose that it may be more locked down for good and bad reasons. Should mention that on the wiki though...

I'll keep trying and figuring things out. I think I'm finally making some progress though so hopefully it works here soon. I think another problem is I grabbed .10 instead of .4 and it's having some slowness issues so I should probably roll that back when/if I grab the 32 bit one instead.
Good luck!
 
Well I finally got it all working. Good news is I really like it all when it works the way it's supposed to. It's light and quick and nice. I'll probably be playing with linux a lot more in the future.
 

Karish

Member
So after a brief stint with Ubuntu 12.10, I've switched to Mint 14 w/ Cinnamon. I'm pretty into it. Any good guides about how to make the most of the installation (and Cinnamon itself).
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
So after a brief stint with Ubuntu 12.10, I've switched to Mint 14 w/ Cinnamon. I'm pretty into it. Any good guides about how to make the most of the installation (and Cinnamon itself).

Install Gnome Shell and kick Cinnamon to the curb.
 
Why? I was using Gnome Shell w/ Ubuntu 12.10, and wasn't happy w/ the performance. Not sure if that was Ubuntu's fault or Gnome's. (I'm on an AMD/ATI laptop...)

I'm having weird performance issues as well and I'm on the same. I'll probably follow your lead to continue my linux adventures.
 

Massa

Member
When it comes to accelerated desktops ATI's proprietary drivers are really lagging behind. :-/

That said, mutter (gnome-shell, elementary) should be much better than compiz (Ubuntu's Unity), which is a piece of garbage. Cinnamon is using an outdated version of mutter, not sure how it's doing these days.

The optimal solution in this case would be a non-accelerated desktop, like XFCE or Gnome Fallback 3.6 or earlier.
 
Q

qizah

Unconfirmed Member
I switched back to Unity after using Gnome. They're both pretty good, I have a hard time deciding which one I'd like to use though. However, I find Unity's Dash and HUD features really useful.

I was wondering too - is SkyDrive a decent substitute to using Microsoft Office through wine? I've been having issues with wine, mainly whenever I open a document spacing gets removed so I end up getting wordslikethis.
 
Okay at this point it's getting really frustrating. There is something really strange going on. Performance is just trash. I'm not on some sort of crazy high end thing, but I'm not on a slouch. I can run lots of games on high, and windows 7 has no issues, but this ubuntu 12.10 just loves to freak out. It will freeze for upwards of 5 minutes and then go back to normal for all of a minute. I will look at the cores and they love to randomly freak out and max. The only other people that seem to have these issues with 12.10 have systems way worse than mine. How do I start to diagnose this? I've messed with the drivers some, but it didn't seem to have any effect.
 

zoku88

Member
Okay at this point it's getting really frustrating. There is something really strange going on. Performance is just trash. I'm not on some sort of crazy high end thing, but I'm not on a slouch. I can run lots of games on high, and windows 7 has no issues, but this ubuntu 12.10 just loves to freak out. It will freeze for upwards of 5 minutes and then go back to normal for all of a minute. I will look at the cores and they love to randomly freak out and max. The only other people that seem to have these issues with 12.10 have systems way worse than mine. How do I start to diagnose this? I've messed with the drivers some, but it didn't seem to have any effect.

Do you have htop installed?

The next time your cores go crazy, you can run htop and then sort by cpu usage. Might give you an idea of what is taking up all of these resources...
 
Do you have htop installed?

The next time your cores go crazy, you can run htop and then sort by cpu usage. Might give you an idea of what is taking up all of these resources...

I'll give that a try.

Part of the problem is the many minute freezing, which I have no clue what to attribute that to.
 

zoku88

Member
I'll give that a try.

Part of the problem is the many minute freezing, which I have no clue what to attribute that to.

Not sure about the freezing.

It could be many things, actually.

To rule out gfx drivers, trying using something really really lightweight. Like openbox or awesome. Those are just window managers. If you still have freezing while using those, it's probably not gfx, I would think.

Could be HDD...
 
Not sure about the freezing.

It could be many things, actually.

To rule out gfx drivers, trying using something really really lightweight. Like openbox or awesome. Those are just window managers. If you still have freezing while using those, it's probably not gfx, I would think.

Could be HDD...
Please don't tell my hard drive is dying noooooo :(

It will freeze up while doing nothing. I'll click on something in the task bar and it will just not respond and then my mouse will stop working. So just the desktop is pretty lightweight.

I'm pretty sure my hdd isn't failing though, or if it is it's the first sign of it. I've had no problems on the windows side of things. Even my largest folders open up instantly and no strange noises or save errors. I've seen nothing to suggest that.
 

Madtown_

Member
Install Gnome Shell and kick Cinnamon to the curb.
No way, cinnamon is better just because it's more customizable. Performance is better too, I think.

Using cinnamon, first thing I did was get the Ubuntu ambiance theme, added a top panel and set up the applets I used. It's pretty simple to use straight out of the box. Also like that Spotify is integrated with the sound menu.
 
Please don't tell my hard drive is dying noooooo :(

It will freeze up while doing nothing. I'll click on something in the task bar and it will just not respond and then my mouse will stop working. So just the desktop is pretty lightweight.

I'm pretty sure my hdd isn't failing though, or if it is it's the first sign of it. I've had no problems on the windows side of things. Even my largest folders open up instantly and no strange noises or save errors. I've seen nothing to suggest that.

The highlighted part is not necessarily true. Desktop Environments do a lot of crap in the background that can use up tons of resources when nothing else is running. I've had the occasional experience where I would find that Tracker, a background process used by GNOME (what Ubuntu uses) apps, has suddely appeared without warning and is trashing my IO and cpu time.

Lightweight desktop means "a desktop that is specifically light in nature", not "a desktop without any programs launched". Try logging in with xfce or lxde (the "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment") and see if the problem persists.
 

Massa

Member
The highlighted part is not necessarily true. Desktop Environments do a lot of crap in the background that can use up tons of resources when nothing else is running. I've had the occasional experience where I would find that Tracker, a background process used by GNOME (what Ubuntu uses) apps, has suddely appeared without warning and is trashing my IO and cpu time.

Lightweight desktop means "a desktop that is specifically light in nature", not "a desktop without any programs launched". Try logging in with xfce or lxde (the "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment") and see if the problem persists.

Tracker runs at low priority so it shouldn't affect your usage. SteveWinwood's problem sounds kernel related, no user space app should lock up a system like that. Probably the driver for something is acting up.
 
Tracker runs at low priority so it shouldn't affect your usage.

They said the same thing about Nepomuk/Akonadi, and that was a problem for a couple years.



SteveWinwood's problem sounds kernel related, no user space app should lock up a system like that. Probably the driver for something is acting up.


Compositing will most certainly do that. But I/O thrashing would, as well.

This reminds me of (did I mention it here?) the researcher who instead of using our job submission script decided to run a loop with ampersands to parallelize an operation being done on every pixel of a 240x240x100 3D image file. The operations used a trivial amount of cpu, but the fact that the load average was fifty thousand all of a sudden absolutely drained the system and made it locky.

But, yeah, I'd personally look at getting rid of anything that uses Xcomposite or other GL finaglery.
 
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