Debian Wheezy (Testing)

[m4r35n357]

For info . . .

I am now running this version of the distro on my main laptop, and can confirm that an Oolite 1.76.1 package is included and working. I suppose this means the same will be true of Ubuntu 12.10, if it is not already there in 12.04.

Feel free to add status for other distros.

[Greyth]

I found that Oolite (1.76) ran significantly better under Debian and Fedora than Ubuntu on three machines so far. As the machines are of different architecture and built over a decade apart I figure it must be Ubuntu that performs poorly, but then I've seen a number of people here using Ubuntu with seemingly no problems. [sigh] Any performance tips for Ubuntu?

[CommRLock78]

[sigh] Any performance tips for Ubuntu?

Install Mint - .

Seriously though, just what kind of performance issues are you having? In Mint 12 I had to add an xorg edger repository because of an odd recurring crash.

[Rese249er]

For info . . .

I am now running this version of the distro on my main laptop, and can confirm that an Oolite 1.76.1 package is included and working. I suppose this means the same will be true of Ubuntu 12.10, if it is not already there in 12.04.

Feel free to add status for other distros.

12.04 has v1.75.3 on Software Center.

[CommRLock78]

BTW, I have never installed Oolite from a repository in any distro I've tried (mostly in the Debian family), and I haven't really had any other problems in doing so, with that exception (Ubuntu 12.04 was doing the same thing, actually, which was a factor in changing to Mint). I've always installed the latest stable version from sourceforge.

Not surprisingly, Mint 13 repo has 1.75.3 as well.

[Tichy]

I found that Oolite (1.76) ran significantly better under Debian and Fedora than Ubuntu on three machines so far. As the machines are of different architecture and built over a decade apart I figure it must be Ubuntu that performs poorly, but then I've seen a number of people here using Ubuntu with seemingly no problems. [sigh] Any performance tips for Ubuntu?

If I remember correctly, Ubuntu Unity uses Compiz as window manager. Desktop composing (Compiz particulary) tends to slow down OpenGL applications.
Try to disable composing, or change desktop enviroinment (xfce, lxde... and in kde you can set kwin to disable composing on fullscreen applications).

Arch Linux with Oolite 1.76.1 and Ati free (non proprietary) drivers here. Works perfectly.

[Greyth]

Thanks Tichy, I'll try that out (although I need to research what your saying because I know very little about Linux except that I like it - so that may take some time).

Broadly speaking Ubuntu (12.04) reports an acceptable framerate but the gameplay experience belies that. It is as though the game is repeatedly pausing for a tiny fraction of a second without the framerate reflecting that or the render is not quite synchronised with the screen refresh leading to slightly erratic performance. Under Debian or Fedora (I loved Fedora and am starting to fall in love with Debian - it's a shame that one of the boards I'm running it on is not entirely compatible - an AN7 with an nForce2 chipset. The incompatibility seems to lie with the AN7's ACPI implementation leading to poor networking performance) the performance is wonderfully smooth even though I have shaders running on such a venerable machine at 1280*1024.

[Greyth]

I had a look at installing KDE on Ubuntu and it seems there might be integration problems. I think what I'll do is hive off the data and install Fedora or Debian. I might try Ubuntu again but I think it needs more oomph than any of my machines can provide. Shame, nice OS and by and large it all works.

[Tichy]

I like Debian. It's one of the few distrubutions with a clear "social contract" http://www.debian.org/social_contract and ethic rules. Unlike Ubuntu, which is more "commercally driven", Debian's aim is to improve all the free software community. Debian developers' work is made to be a benefit to all. (in Ubuntu, for example, ~75% of the packages, comes unmodified from Debian... and the rest has modifications that'useful almost only for Ubuntu itself).
http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analy ... out-debian

[Amah]

seconded... and I like their critical stance on propretary binary blobs as well. Despite rumours installing Debian is not too hard anymore... But if you prefer installing from a Live-Disc you might look into projects like parsix or siduction.

About speeding up Ubuntu... Maybe an alternative Kernel like the one from liquorix could help.

[Greyth]

Debian is a beautiful thing and was the only kernel to report 'error probing SMB1' with the AN7 board. In comparison with Ubuntu it's fast and furious. I had no real problems installing it (that I can remember) and I'm a complete klutz. I liked it so much I downloaded the installation DVD as well as the CD. The only thing I didn't like was the default visual theme which was a bit like 'my first desktop' in appearence (DB6) but it's not too much hassle to change that. I loved Fedora too and it's the fastest distro I've tried so far at transferring data via a network. Very clean and business like. NVidia also have pre-compiled drivers that fit Fedora so that may be an issue if you have some old nForce bag of board problems like me. They are also available for Redhat and Mandrake, I believe. Not tried those yet.

[m4r35n357]

In comparison with Ubuntu it's fast and furious.

It most certainly is. I used the LXDE+XFCE ISO and found that XFCE is actually faster than LXDE on my Aspire One netbook.

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/wheez ... e-CD-1.iso

I dd'd the ISO to a 2GB USB stick, then used gparted to make another partition in the free space, formatted it to FAT16 and unzipped the non-free firmware archive to that. Pretty universal installer

[Greyth]

I couldn't believe that Linux had partition imaging available from the command line! We had to employ all manner of weird and wonderful solutions to image a windows partition and they only ever made it more difficult to do with every OS they released . I wouldn't go back for all the tea in China

Sorry to prattle on but yesterday I wanted to rip a CD (Yeah - a genuine one to play in a car) - Linux recognised the CD and offered to do the rip using the .ogg output format. Unbelievable on a virgin linux load. It's difficult to comprehend why people still use M$o$ (although I do have a Win7 partition on one machine just in case I need a reminder).

Thanks for listening - I feel a lot better!

[CommRLock78]

I couldn't believe that Linux had partition imaging available from the command line! We had to employ all manner of weird and wonderful solutions to image a windows partition and they only ever made it more difficult to do with every OS they released . I wouldn't go back for all the tea in China

Sorry to prattle on but yesterday I wanted to rip a CD (Yeah - a genuine one to play in a car) - Linux recognised the CD and offered to do the rip using the .ogg output format. Unbelievable on a virgin linux load. It's difficult to comprehend why people still use M$o$ (although I do have a Win7 partition on one machine just in case I need a reminder).

Thanks for listening - I feel a lot better!

It is difficult to understand why people still use M$'s little toy OS - until you remember that they've made every attempt to keep users from knowing that there are alternatives. I think if more people knew that they had an alternative, Linux would already have the majority of the market share. However, I think Window$ 8 will be creating loads of converts.

[Tricky]

I couldn't believe that Linux had partition imaging available from the command line! We had to employ all manner of weird and wonderful solutions to image a windows partition and they only ever made it more difficult to do with every OS they released . I wouldn't go back for all the tea in China

Sorry to prattle on but yesterday I wanted to rip a CD (Yeah - a genuine one to play in a car) - Linux recognised the CD and offered to do the rip using the .ogg output format. Unbelievable on a virgin linux load. It's difficult to comprehend why people still use M$o$ (although I do have a Win7 partition on one machine just in case I need a reminder).

Thanks for listening - I feel a lot better!

It is difficult to understand why people still use M$'s little toy OS - until you remember that they've made every attempt to keep users from knowing that there are alternatives. I think if more people knew that they had an alternative, Linux would already have the majority of the market share. However, I think Window$ 8 will be creating loads of converts.

Still not stop companies using Win95 and IE 6