So which OS?

[Robbie]

Which OS should I choose? I have a spare laptop hard drive (500 gig) and a decent laptop I could put it into. So I was going to use that, but the question is, what OS should I try? I do like and am use to Ubuntu, but I am open to suggestion.
Help a brother out.

 

[Robbie]

Oh... and do I want 64 bit or 32? I have some old games I can install and try.

 

[Daniel~]

I would advice Mint 14 or 15. I like 15. I use Mint 15 64 bit, 64 because it folds using all on my cores and 32 bit does not! But 32 is a little easier to get games working on. So if your not sure how much of a battle your up for, I go with 32. Good to have you around again Robbie!

 

[Robbie]

It's good to be around. I am home today and will be for the next couple of days. The wife went in for surgery this morning to remove something that's been bugging her. She's (we) are at home now resting. She's doing well, some pain but she seems good.

 

[Daniel~]

Give your wife my best wishes.

 

[Robbie]

Yes sir, and you the same.

 

[Daniel~]

Will do.":O}

 

[Robbie]

OK install done. Now adding software.

 

[Daniel~]

You've made a good decision, enjoy.":O}

 

[Daniel~]

OK I just gotta ask! Please know that as long as your happy I'm happy...But as your around the 4th or 5th guy to do this...Like I said I just gotta ask! LOL

You asked me to "help a brother out" and recommend a distro, I did, I gave you my reasons and gave you my best advice... Then you completely ignored what I (after around 5 years experience with Mint and Ubuntu) recommended and picked a distro I happen to know is no where as good for what you want to do...But I believe that's how we all learn and you won't get into to much trouble in Ubuntu, but when you do I won't be of to much good to you as I use Mint...

So Please tell me why!? LOL

 

[Robbie]

The quick and easy of it Dan, you took too long to answer... I was standing at the cash register with credit card in hand. I wanted to get going NOW!!! I am impatient!!! YOU KNOW DIS MAN!!! ha ha!! So I went with what I knew, only to find out... I no longer knew it. Ubnutu has gone to a "Mac feel" I thought about trying Suse but I went with Mint 15 instead.

Brian and I had one hell of a day yesterday. I never fired up google and managed to chat with him. (most of the day I might add and thanks again bro I might add) Turns out I have an AMD video card and just can't really get it working right with the distro. Cinnamon will crash and often. So i reinstalled this morning, didn't update cinnamon and managed to load up Neverwinter. Uggg it works... but it's slow... real slow. I'm sure it's because it's using generic video drivers. So here I sit typing on my Mint install (I do like the feel and layout of Mint, just wish I could get it to work properly. All in due time I guess.

 

[Robbie]

Still can't edit.

 

[Daniel~]

Ok...I'm dead broke so if this will help you you will have to pay for shipping, sad to say..in advance... that said:

I have a PNY Geforce 7900 GT GDDR3 266 MB PCIE
G77900GN1F26F

If you don't want it or have better COOL! ":O}

BUT...Your not going ANYWHERE in Ubuntu with an ATI card, it's... (Get this!) just not in the cards!

I petty sure I used the card on my Asus P5Q motherboard... yes I'm sure of it now that I think about it. It WILL handle most any DX 9 game you might want to run.

And you can get the love Mint is trying to give.

P.S
NEVER EVER pay for Linux my man! That's corrupt MS type thinking you have to grow beyond.

 

[booman]

Did Rob say he purchased Ubuntu? I had no idea...
Yeah we chatted for almost the whole day yesterday as I helped him install the fglrx and AMD drivers.
None of them worked with his Acer laptop.
Laptops are always the disadvantage for gaming, by the way...

But Ubuntu and Mint 15 ran fine. Its just when we tried to get the drivers installed, the software installer installed fglrx drivers that just didn't work. Actually crashed Cinnamon over and over.
So then we decided to go "manual" and install the proprietary AMD drivers downloaded from their website.
Found a nice tutorial about how to find required packages... downloaded and installed those...
Still had problems. He installed Mint 4 times yesterday trying to get this to work.

No I did find a command to remove and purge old drivers, then install Mesa again.
But its hard to know if its actually working correctly?

But I think I learned something new:
fglrx drivers are open source from AMD
Catalyst is the closed source drivers from AMD

Correct?

 

[Gizmo]

I have a mobo here with built-in ATI graphics. I never did get the stinking thing to work correctly with ATI drivers (catalyst or fglrx). I ended up buying an nVidia card.

 

[booman]

Yeah, sucks for laptop users....
Ironically my Chromebook can play a number of games! Torchlight 1 in fact!
It has an Intel HD 2000 chip... nothing special, actually quite old, but still plays them old games even in Linux.

 

[Gizmo]

My Dell Precision M6500 lappy does just fine, but it's got nVidia inside. It's not much by desktop standards, but it's decent for a lappy (Quadro FX 2800M)

 

[Daniel~]

I'm just glad I don't have to my desktop more than every few years. Hey WOW! If I had a lappy I could just mail it to Gizmo when ever I stubbed my toe on a new OS! ":O}

 

[Robbie]

Would make it pretty easy wouldn't it Dan?

 

[Daniel~]

For me, yes, for Gizmo...it just might get him into heaven if he could endure it! ":O}