[dragon69]

yep mine is listed under 2D acceleration only so i think i missed the boat on this until i upgrade to
a 3450 or 4650 ati (maybe a 9500 or 9600 gt from the green camp lol or a 2400 series as they are getting cheap too)

wel thanks anyways CharlesB for trying and i have been around that

site to for a bit but their is a lot of info on there to digest

good luck and take care CharlesB

Chuck


h3.
Message was edited by: dragon69

[CharlesB]

dragon69 said:

yep mine is listed under 2D acceleration only so i think i missed the boat on this until i upgrade to a 3450 or 4650 ati (maybe a 9500 or 9600 gt from the green camp lol or a 2400 series as they are getting cheap too) well thanks anyways CharlesB for trying and i have been around that site to for a bit but their is a lot of info on there to digest good luck and take care CharlesB

Chuck
h3. Message was edited by: dragon69

Don't count your video card down and out just yet. Further down it says the following:

Quote

fglrx is the name of the closed-source, proprietary driver from ATI. It conflicts with the open-source "radeon" driver. If the "fglrx" kernel module is loaded at boot, X will be able to start using the "radeon" driver but "Direct Rendering" (DRI) will be disabled. This results in a severe performance reduction.

It goes on to say how to fix this... isn't too hard to fix.... Just look for this heading (on the same page of the link I posted earlier): "Removing the proprietary fglrx driver". Every time they say to do "sudo apt-get" you can also do the same job with Synaptic (Synaptic is the graphical user interface -- the front-end face -- of apt-get). You do not have to use the command line there if you don't want to. I know how people who just came from Windows like/need the graphical apps.

Remember, you still can improve your graphics performance, all you have to do is turn on DRI (Direct Rendering). It enables the Linux to use your graphics card, instead of using just software to manage everything. I have an old Matrox G200 AGP (onboard 3D) graphics, and it still can run some first person shooter games quite nicely -- just by enabling DRI. Trust me, you will see the big payoff when you use some openGL screen savers.

CharlesB

[jimric]

Ever since I moved from windows to Linux several years ago,I see no need to ever go back to windows.

I have been using Ubuntu Linux everydayand I love it.

[taustin1382]

ok, where to start....


#1 software installation: RPM and .deb files can be downloaded from the web just like .exe's for windows and double clicked to install.... just like exe's in windows. or you can justcheck the apps in ad remove apps... much easier than windows.

#2 Open office..... remeber out of the box windows cannot read .doc, xls etc....and I have found plenty of bugs in MS office suites over the years that have not been addressed until the following releases that you had to pay even more money for.

#3 linux implementation: I have personally been through training 150+ users to use linux instead of XP. basically dell started shipping us vista preinstalled even after we advised them that it was non corporate complient. when we asked for xp the advised it sould be $200 more to downgrade. we went ahead and made the decision to install ubuntu 7.04 on all our PC's (now 8.04). we installed kde on 10 pc's and gnome on 10 more.... we gave the users a quick rundown of thunderbird, firefox, open office and let them run. we had them catalog any issues they ran across..... after a week we swapped the kde and gnome environments and let them run for another week. the users prefered gnome hands down. we installed ubuntu on 10 pc's per week training the users for 15 minutes in classroom style. giving them a fe simple tasks tp preform (browse to ....com and email someone the link, write a paragraph in oo and imbed a chart, attach it to an email.... etc) and a web page to report issues. after 1 month the issues stopped coming in as often and the total cost was half of 1 windows license per PC. dell refuses to ship no os systems so

we are still paying for the licenses even though we are not using them.... we migrated our servers to RHEL and with 24x7 support we are paying $250per year... total cost for the os and support..... thats $25per month compared to a few thousand for the enterprise edition of win server 2Kx.

Linux will replace MS eventually if MS does not wise up and stop pushing their vendors to force the OS.... especially if they keep flooding the market with crap...

oh and our service call volume has dropped 80%.... no virus issues and far less random crashes and system errors. our helpdesk has lots of time to work on projects instead of reinstalling ghost images and fighting viruses.

did I mention the fact that you can map users profiles to a server and they can have true roaming profiles.... couple that with an onsite approved repository and any user can sit at any desk and have all their software and files at their finger tips...... oh and its FREE!!!! yeah MS had better be worried....



for the record I remember a time not so long ago where windows required you to drop to dos to install any software.... go pull out any install instructions pre win2000/xp and the first line will be open dos and type cd d: ....... etc....

concidering that just 5 years ago the fedora install required major understanding of the OS to complete and get working and today its point and click and will even edit your existing partitions to make room for it self. I would say in 5 more years it will be ready to start posing a major threat and you will start seeing comapnies cross developing for it. unfortunately linux's major hold up is marketing or lack of.....

[rgreen4]

taustin1382 said:

for the record I remember a time not so long ago where windows required you to drop to dos to install any software.... go pull out any install instructions pre win2000/xp and the first line will be open dos and type cd d: ....... etc....

For the record - that was with Windows 3.1. Windows 95 and later have direct installation. Windows 3.1 also started in DOS and you had to type WIN to start windows. The only time you had to drop to a command window in Win95 was to install a dos based application, not a windows based application. The same is true today, if you wanted to run a dos based application, you have to open a command window or boot with DR-DOS. Windows has had direct installation of windows applications for the last 13 years.

[taustin1382]

I have seen may installaton instructions for 95/98 throw you straight in to dos. true the feature to click and install was there but the instructions still tossed you in to dos. Windows 95 was a huge step from 3.1 but it was still the same under pinnings and proceedures underneath.



This is completely irrelevent anyway since linux application installs generally dont require you to drop in to terminal any more. im not sure I have needed to go in to terminal on any of the 8.10 boxes the kids use. I just use synaptic or download the .deb installers....

[RedRat]

[~43052]

Your reply concerning your training of corporate users is really great news. It is good to hear that your users quickly picked up on Linux. Good to here about the Gnome user vs. KDE. More enterprise users should really give it a try. In order to spread Linux, it really needs to be done in the corporate environment where there are some IT people to handhold new users.

[taustin1382]

you know the only problem is there is no benefit to it for your average company.... you cannot buy PC's without MS on it (other than a few lowend dells....) so you are paying for windows anyway. also its hard to show the savings to management in terms of hours saved on support and not having to pay licensing fees for office and such.


there was not that much hand holding either. we showed them how to use thunderbird and firefox and gave a quick open office demo.... the questions that came in were more like "I cannot install this thing i brought from home" to which we replied "these are corporate machines you are not allowed to install what ever that is.... " and "where is my ... application?" to which we sent a request for the helpdesk to install the linux equivilent app... Gimp was a popular one for our graphics dept and a few plugins for firefox to view flash content for online meetings and such. I should note that this was for a call center environment and they did ticket tracking through an oracle based web app. so all they needed was email, browser and word processing for some reports they have to keep up with.


they took to it like a duck to water..... the best part was they did not have admin rights to make any changes other than their profile so they could not break it and if they did some how manage to goof something up we just poped in the boot disk and installed off the server.... very slick.


also this saved the company money because ubuntu runs just fine on older hardware. this is a great way to save money and time for your IT staff. the only recomendation i would make is to try and get NO OS machines so you dont end up eating the cost of a windows license.

[dragon69]

ok rgreen4 but i have seen win98 installls where it states if it does not autorun to drop down to the dos based installers in the past

but i think his point was that even in windoze you still might ( and now it seems i have to go to the command prompt more in windoze

then ubuntu ) use the command prompt and that linux has moved forward and you may have to use the terminal a lot less then in the past ( and yes maybe even less then when you are working on a windoze machine)

well everyone have a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

good luck and take care

chuck

[rgreen4]

I don't know why you would have to go to the command line. Actually, since Win2K, the command line has been a DOS emulator within windows, as DOS was no longer even an underpining. Even in Win95 and 98, you did a direct install of Windows, not a DOS install as you did in 3.1 and then install Windows on top. The command line window in 95 and 98 was DOS, but as for those instructions, the last time I installed a program in DOS was a DOS app. The last time I used a command line, I think was about 5 years ago or so, trying to use an old DOS app on an old Win98 machine.

If autorun does not run for some reason on a windows install, you simply go to Windows Explorer and double click setup. That's if your running install from a CD. If you are installing a downloaded application, you just double click the downloaded install application and it installs. While you obviously cannot install a DOS application in Windows, you also cannot install a Windows application in DOS.

As for installing within Linux, all of you are still referring to a separate install program to load within Linux to then install the application. That's nice, but the question remains is why doesn't Linux do this in Linux? If you are running Ubuntu 8.10, why can't you just download the application and double click to install?

[dragon69]

you know the only
problem is there is no benefit to it for your average company.... you
cannot buy PC's without MS on it (other than a few lowend dells....) so
you are paying for windows anyway. also its hard to show the savings to
management in terms of hours saved on support and not having to pay
licensing fees for office and such.



but it would save your company quite a bit more if their were biulding their own machines instead of buying them just ask your it staff if they can handle it and how much you can save as i know for a fact that dell hp and ibm charge a premium price on all business class machines ( so that they can garantee that the same machine willbe availible to the said business for 12 to 18 months after the purchase just so the it guys will only have to deal with a few different footprints ( i mean images for back up and re installation purposes ) then your company will not have to pay for a M$ license that they do not use

last year at XMAS time i biult this dual core (amd x2 4200 2 gb ddr2 @667 and 250 gb hdd and a decent case for about 350 bucks but vista home premium cost me an additional 143 all in CND ) and if i can do it so can most people and your it staff should be way ahead of me on knowledge ( if not then you guys hired the wrong it staff lol ) as i am just a noob but i am willing to spend time and work things out and match things up ok not a noob but not a guru either

good luck taustin1382 and take care

chuck

btw did i mention that i wished i worked for your company as it would of saved me a lot of searching on the internet to fix stuff up if i had someone close that i could ask questions to ( waa waa i need a little hand holding too sometimes but google is my friend and it helps me out everyday when i need solutions just have to weed through the results and find the right one lol)

Merry Xmas everyone and may the flops be with you

chuck :-)

[dragon69]

just remember that they should not always go with the cheapest parts as it will cost your company more money in the long run



get decent power supplies ,cases,motherboards and ram and they will make the builds cheaper in the long run by not causing to many extra problems and it will still save your company more money



see if your companies IT staff could put up a proposal for an average build ( that is all ubuntu needs not the 5000 dollar paper wieght lol i mean gamer machine)



if your company is not willing to build their own comps then maybe look locally for a small shop that can handle your order then check out their company profile to make the right informed choices



gl and tc e1

chuck

[RedRat]

dragon69
For the home user it can be cost effective to build your own computer. However, in the corporate world you must consider the hourly cost of each employee. Their time is not free, like my time at home (and even that is not true, I may not be worth $100/hr but my time is worth more than $0/hour).
Most companies have about a 50% to as much as 100% overhead calculated on each employee, so a guy earning say $20/hour is costing the company about $30-40/hour, obviously if you have higher paid types the cost is even more. But figure that it takes several hours of the employee's time to find and order the parts (I probably spent at least 8 hours finding parts on line and comparing values) and then it took me another 8 hours to build the machine since the parts dribbled in. I think I invested about 16 hours or so in building my machine. At a corporate rate of $30/hr you are into the computer for about $500 or so.
Remember here we are not talking about some very small business of only a couple of employees but something on the enterprise level. Now you have to throw the IT department in on this project and here you may have one to two guys spending at least an hour to get the machine hooked up and software installed.
Building a computer can be fun and instructive, but when most businesses are now stripped down to be lean and mean and a lot of the temp help has been let go, they really can't have people taking time to build computers. You can get machines pre-loaded with Linux (Dell does this and that is what I bought--a 530n) and it worked out of the box.

[dragon69]

when you are installing windoze there is not windoze explorer yet that comes after you install windoze

but you can change the directory until you get to setup.exe (but you can not just click it lol) and run setup.exe or oemsetup.exe for some installs

gl and tc

chuck

[dragon69]

the first 8 hours in your example will be spread out over the 100 machines you are planning to as

once you find the parts you will want to keep all machine as simular as possible for less head aches

in the future so the cost will be a little over 250 right how much is each windoze license costing you mightbe

offset by the amount you save on not paying the premium to hp or dellfor getting comps that are all configured identically

think people think (outside of the box)

you will get the exact machine you require for minimal price with no extra os that you will not use not what dell can get the best price on and remember dell only offers 2 or 3 machine right now that can come with ubuntu pre installed and it might not be the ideal system that your company requires

dell only offer a few ( 2 or 3) comps with ubuntu and they might not be the best choice for all companies (little under 500 bucks cnd for that dell times 100 = a big chance to save some bucks

does your company already have a cloning system for hard drives as you can speed up the process of biulding many machine and will save you a lot of time

[rgreen4]

When you are installing windows itself, Windows Explorer is not available, but I have never had an install of Windows not start once the CD, DVD is inserted. Once Windows is installed, Windows Explorer is always there as it is an integral part of Windows and has been since Win95.

[CharlesB]

Good God! Why is everyone afraid of the command line? OMG! It's black and empty, and I have to type something!.... OH Crap! It is soooo scary!

The whole argument is mute. The better argument is that I would rather be in a Linux command line, than a windows DOS screen. You can get way more done ... a whole lot faster.

CharlesB

[taustin1382]

RPM's and DEB's work EXACTLY like that.... double click, and off it goes... the secondary application is to browse the repositories for software if you do not want to go hunting on google or software download sites.

as for never having to use command prompt.... aparently you do not do any major file management... I would be lost with out command prompt in windows.... try doing any system administration without cmd.... in linux its about the same for sysadmin stuff....

for your average user you will not need to drop in to cmd or terminal regardless of what you are using. linux and windows have moved to gui installers both of which are very easy to use.

[taustin1382]

as for building the pc's.... ARE YOU MAD!?!?! we are talking about 50 pc's peryear at least.... at the cost of a helpdesk tech (approx 25ph) thats about $100 per pc . so it pretty much negates any savings plus the big issue is hardware support. its nice to call dell and have someone with a part on site in 24hours.

[rgreen4]

You have missed the whole point. The average consumer does not want to go to school to have to learn how to install a program. It's not that they are afraid of it, it's the fact that in todays world it should be totally unnecessary. It is in Windows and OS/X for the average user, and to have to use it in Linux is like telling them that their next car will come with a manual transmission, crank up windows and manual door locks. Nothing wrong with them, it just that the consumer don't want them.

You don't succeed in business by selling people what you think they need or should use, but by selling them what they want. People want to turn on the ignition, put the selector in drive, push on the gas and go. At 15 miles an hour or when the lever hits the D, they expect to hear the clunk of the electric door locks, and the whirl of the electric windows when the go through the drive through. Anything else they reject.

The same is true of computers. That's why the keyboard plug is purple, the mouse plug is green the VGA connector is blue. They don't want to have to read a manual to hook up the computer and when they turn it on, they expect an easy to use interface. When they download a program, they expect to just double click and it's installed.

Even I, who started in DOS, don't like to have to go back into the archaic interface. I have better things to do with my limited time than to putz around in the command line when I don't have to. When you try a strange and different operating system, and are forced to use a strange command line, with different syntax, it's just easy to go back to the familiar and let the tech-head's play with their toy. I am sure you disagree with that, but it's why Windows has a 90+ percentage acceptance and Linux less than 2%. Linux was supposed to be the OS that would unseat Windows dominance, but in the 25 years that it has been out, it has not come close to accomplishing that.

Someone needs to take a hard look at why Linux as a free OS is not the choice of the masses. And it's not the glitzy Windows ads on TV either, for word of mouth is a far better advertising medium. People like to portray Vista as a failure after two years with approximately a 25% market share, how then can one classify Linux after 25 years with a 2% share?

As for a company building their own computers, the IT Department of any company of any size that even contemplated that would be shut down on that scheme by the Controller in a heartbeat. You simply cannot build by hand a few hundred or then a thousand computers one at a time in a cost competitive basis against a company that produces them on an assembly line by the millions. I had an Accountant working for me once lamenting when the storeroom was throwing away several brand new in-the-box starters for a truck that had been sold. They would not fit the new maintenance truck, the parts store would not take them back, and we got zero bids on them. To the company they had no value. He said the frame could be re-drilled to fit the engine of the new truck. We pointed out it would cost the company $40 a starter to modify them, and we could buy new ones for the new truck for $25.

You would spend $500 labor to build a computer to compete with a major producers machine that sells for $500, and that not even including your parts. Maybe they're not the most powerful or the fanciest machines when they come off the assembly line, but companies want an effective machine not the fanciest. And, unless they are a graphics design company, or game developer where power and powerful graphics are needed, a mid-range machine with integrated graphics is more than adequate. It has been at least 20 years since I had a more powerful machine at work than I did at home. Most of the time it was two generations behind.