10 days in linux

I’m finally able to use Kubuntu for an extended time! I told myself that I’d stay for as long as I could if linux started supporting my dual screen display (I spent hours previously with little to no luck on getting dual screen to work) and supported GMod above 800×600 resolution. It now does both! I have now used Kubuntu without booting into Windows once for 10 days. In order to share my joy with whoever may read this blog entry, I’ll share some tips I learned along my travels. 🙂

  1. Always use envy to install your drivers. For whatever reason, the default restricted installer doesn’t install a very good driver.
  2. Use “sudo apt-get build-dep wine” to get the dependencies for building wine. I like to compile wine from scratch, so this has come in handy.
  3. Use “uname -a” to get your current kernel version
  4. Did you display configuration go bonkers and now you can’t do anything? Use “dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg” to reset the config.
  5. Do you get a black screen on startup? Install package “startupmanager”, run it under sudo, change the resolution to something lower. You probably also want to enable text display in there,  comes in handy.

Last, not included on the list because it’s pretty random, you can output to sound using /dev/dsp. Ex, file > /dev/dsp will “play” a file through your soundcard. Pointless but cool.

4 thoughts on “10 days in linux”

  1. Yes, I use VMWare for various things that don’t work well in wine, but VMWare is not suitable for games. Thanks for the comment though!

  2. I’ve had Envy screw things up a few times. It only installs the latest driver from Nvidia’s site, something you can do manually without the risk of the script borking something.

    Also, you probably don’t want to compile wine if you’re just doing it to get the newest version. Check out this page: http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb

  3. Hi James, didn’t realize they had a special Ubuntu repository set up. I was just compiling the latest version before, but in the latest versions several programs I need no longer work. Maybe I’ll pick up the repo as soon as 1.0 is out. 🙂

    I tried installing the Nvidia driver myself once and completely hosed my system. I don’t think I want to try that again…

    Nice site by the way, glad to see other Letu’ers out and about.

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