Requesting review before I install

[David.C]

I am preparing to install Fedora Core 4 (FC4) on my system, but before I do I would appreciate it if a few of the experienced users would look over the setup. This will be a full plunge, so I won't have internet access until after a successful install (or I give up and reinstall Windows), so letting me know of any potential trouble spots before I begin will be a big help.

First, a bit of my background so you can gauge the level of your replies. I have used Linux (several varieties) while in college (BS in Computer Science and AS in Network Administration), but that was several years ago and I imagine as much has changed as has stayed the same. In short, I will likely understand the concept of what your saying -- even if the terms used are uncomprehensible. Likewise, will have read and understood (will post back if I don't) the Official FC4 installation guide before I begin, and likely before I look back in on this thread -- so you can assume I am familiar with that as well.

Continuing in a top-down approach in my preparations, next are the users that will be using this machine, what we generally do and the applications we previously used to do it. My wife and kids use the system about the same, so I'll lump them together. None of them have used anything but MS Windows, so any advice to make the transition easy for them will be helpful.

All
Surf the web -- currently using Microsoft Internet Explorer, but have used FireFox some.
no problems expected

Office applications -- This includes email as well as word and excel mainly. Curently using MS Office 2003, but have started using OpenOffice 2.0.
no problems expected

Me
Image manipulation -- Amateur photographer. I have been using a borrowed copy of PhotoShop, but recently downloaded The GIMP and have been looking it over.
no problems expected

CD/DVD backup -- Some may object to this, but as long as DVDs are as expensive as they are I am not letting my small children watch the originals, and MP3s are just too convenient and portable to not take advantage of. I currently use DVDDecrypter and CloneDVD, along with DaemonTools for DVD images and ExactAudioCopy, CDRWin and LAME for CDs. I know I can mount images directly in FC4 and LAME is readily available so that won't be a problem, but I am not aware of a Linux equivalent replacement for the others.

Various Games -- Hope to get them working with an emulator, but I have no experience in this area.

That will get us started on the software side, so on to the hardware. With as old and mainstream (at the time) the components are I am not expecting any problems -- but it doesn't hurt to be cautious.

ASUS A7M266-D Motherboard with 2 AMD AthlonMP 1800 CPUs

ATI Radeon 8500 64MB video card -- dual displays (19" Samsung 997MB and generic 17")

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card -- with Labtec speakers (2+sub)

Western Digital 40GB drive -- main drive, attached to primary MB IDE (currenly WinXP, but will be wiped for the install -- suggestions on partitioning?)

LiteOn DVD burner -- attached to secondary MB IDE

3Com 3C905C-TX -- attached to broadband router for wireless internet connection and occasionally networked computers -- IP given by router w/DHCP

generic USB card

Promise Ultra100 TX2 IDE controller -- with 2 Western Digital 100GB drives in a WinXP software RAID-0. I realize this will have to be removed, and will have it backed up before the install -- recommendations on how to set it up? Is software RAID available in FC4?

Canon i850 printer -- attached to USB card

Logitech Trackman Trackball -- attached to USB card

MicroInnovations wireless keyboard/mouse combo -- attached to USB card. I don't use the mouse (see trackball above). PS2 connection damaged and unusable. USB was a big deal to get working when I last looked at linux, I'm hoping it's come forward since then.

USB card reader -- attached to USB card. Used to download images from camera. Does not have to be connected during install, so if it would be easier to take care of it afterward let me know.

I think that about covers it. If I've not given enough information for you to get an idea of how this system is setup and used, let me know.

David

[RedFedora]

I think you might run into trouble with the games. Emulating games
tends to be pretty hit and miss. Out of courisity, why not set
up your machine to duel boot either Windows or Linux?

Linux has some nice CD/DVD burning technology. k3b comes
to mind.

[Ratty]

Games Something I love It really depends on what your bag is. I love FPS's and as such I've got Unreal Tournament 2003 & 2004 installed (Linux Native comes with the windows version) and am looking at installing cegua (spelling is wrong I know) it's an off shoot of wine and will install lots of Windows native games. It isn't free but is very cheap.

Rat

[arthurhanlon]

Hi there,

I agree with RedFedora, games may pose a slight problem, this is the reason that I opted for dual boot with WindowsXP. I mainly only use it when I'm about to fire up CS or BF2 now and find that Linux meets all my other non gaming needs.

CD/DVD Backup
You should be fine with backing up CDs but DVDs.....Hmmmmm......that may be a bit awkward. I've heard of people using DVDShrink for Windows running under Wine on Linux and they reckon it works away fine. There is a set of Perl scripts that will RIP DVDs to your hard disc but unfortunately will not compress to single layer or even double layer size. http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/

Dual Displays
ATI's driver for Linux should allow you to continue using this feature. Be wary though as your card seems to be the earliest they support.
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...ge&folderID=27

All else should be fine but not sure about the Promise card and the USB card as have had no eperience with addon controllers.

The best route for yourself would probably be a dual boot for your games but if you choose not to you should at least try this first to check that all your hardware works fine.

Hope this helps and do let us know how you get on.

Arthur

[David.C]

The games are a minor consideration on my part -- I play mainly RTS (AoE, Civ and such) the kids are learning type games (JumpStart and such) and the wife plays the basic board and card games.

Video card -- the 8500 is the card they started making Catalyst drivers with, before that each card was different. So, it's not surprising it is the oldest the current drivers support. I have no trouble with the latest on Windows, so the support should be in the shared code.

Dual-boot -- I am not wanting to because I want to get away from borrowed software. Windows came with a friends complete system, he didn't need it so I borrowed it (would have to go back to 98SE to use my own), Office is my brother's (he had it from work so didn't need, changed jobs so I've been trying OpenOffice), PhotoShop is from another friend (who purchased the Creative Suite as part of a Graphics curriculum and wasn't using PS -- he will be next session). Over all I am just tired of the dependency on others. so I won't be doing a dual boot at this time.

DVDs -- hmm, oh well, I figured there would be some things I would have to do a bit more digging to get working well.

Thanks for the help, I'll let you know how it works out.

David

[David.C]

Originally Posted by arthurhanlon

... Hope this helps and do let us know how you get on.

Arthur

Ok, checking back as requested.

I finally got everything on my data drives backed up and started to install. The Installation DVD would not boot the system, so I had to use the Installation CD1. After checking all CDs I checked to DVD to see if it would tell me why it didn't boot. The DVD verified fine, so I went ahead with the installation from it -- Save myself the trouble of having to swap disks, I thought. No go. As soon as setup started partitioning the drives it complained it was unable to inform the kernel of the status of hda2, saying it was busy or in use and that I was not to mount or use it until after a full reboot. The setup then exited abnormally due to not being able to continue.

I then started again using the CDs all the way thru and installed with only one problem -- Sound. I don't use it and had forgotten the MB has on-board sound. The installation detected it and asked if I could hear the test sounds -- it did not tell me at this point it was testing the on-board sound, so there were no speakers attached. Result, I don't hear a thing. The installation finishes and after looking in the hardware browser I see that only the onboard sound was detected -- not the Santa Cruz. I'm guessing it stopped looking after finding one sound device, so I will have to look around and find how to get it to recognize the add-on card.

The only other hitch during installation was the first boot screen -- with my keyboard and mouse attached to an add-on USB controller they were not functioning at that point. Letting it time out and continue solved that problem, and the keyboard and mouse worked find on all other screens.

I'm off to refamiliarize myself with Linux -- any 'first things to do' suggestions are always welcome.

David

[David.C]

Further updates,

I've done the full system update (takes a while, doesn't it ) and fixed the sound.

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz: I went thru a lot of posts that said to turn this on, to install this or that -- in the end all I needed to do was turn DAC on in the Volume Control applet of Alsa Sound Mixer. Works fine now, within the testing I've done.

Next step is to get the data drives set into a Software raid-0, user accounts and handling DVDs.

As a side note, my wife is not sure about this, but is saying that is because she doesn't like change -- her first words were 'Nice Windows Rip-off!'

On the subject of user accounts, is there a way to graphically log into an account without a password? I ask because in Windows XP I had the kids on a limited access account without a password -- they just needed to click on the login that said 'Kids'. Since these are young children, typing a login and password is the preferred route -- (meaning my wife or I would have to log them in when they wanted on; not a big deal, but certainly a step backwards in their learning to do things themselves).

David