From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/5101 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tobias Burnus Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: linux question Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 16:07:57 +0200 Sender: owner-ntg-context@let.uu.nl Message-ID: <3B5446BD.7C7D0144@net-b.de> References: <5.1.0.14.1.20010717104534.02096e08@server-1> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035395715 31280 80.91.224.250 (23 Oct 2002 17:55:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 17:55:15 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ntg-context@ntg.nl Original-To: Hans Hagen Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:5101 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context:5101 Hi Hans, > I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop again my > video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way behind > windows]. This is not neccessarily true: There big bussiness now supports Linux very well. The problem are mostly caused by small no name cards or special cards from far east. If you have a SiS card (I had one) you should update to XFree86 4.1.0. The same is true if the card is very new. Get: SaX2 from ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/X/XFree86/SaX2/suse71/ X11R6.5.1 by XFree86 from: ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/X/XFree86/XFree86-4.1.0-SuSE/suse71/ > I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with starting > the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers are supposed to run > on newer drivers? Internally there has much changed (as with the output routine in ConTeXt) but the interface is nearly unchanged. I suspect rather -- as Taco does -- a X config error. Can you update SaX2 and XFree86 and make sure that they are really installed. Re-run "sax2". (For NVidia see below) If it doesn't work post the output of: xf86version sax2 -v sax2 -p rpm -q sax2 xdevel xextra xf86 xf86tools xfnt100 xfntcyr xfntscl xloader xman xmodules xshared xxprt # Only: xshared xf86 xloader sax2 need to be uptodate hwinfo --log=foo.log --all For a better font quality you simply need to install the microsoft true type fonts by using /usr/X11R6/bin/fetchmsttfonts. (Check that /etc/X11/XF86Config contains FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"). The advantage is that this is a scalable font (there are tons of bitmap fonts) and that with qt-experimental (I think the packages is called like this) all Qt applications can use antialising for fonts (XFree86 rendering extention). Giuseppe Bilotta wrote: > Since Windows is (still) more widespread than Linux, manufacturers > are more interested in developing Windows drivers rather than > Linux'. Well this is going to be changed: Now all big manufactors have developement teams for Linux. > HH> I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with > HH> starting the window manager. Does anyone know if window > HH> managers are supposed to run on newer drivers? > They are supposed to. Anyway, you might want to try a more recent > of the same wm. In theory the programs shouldn't see a difference between X11R6.4 and X11R6.5(.1) and between XF86 3.x and XF86 4.0.x(4.1.x). The only program which had problems was XDVI: The XF 3.x version didn't show the buttons in 4.x. > HH> Are the otherw linux's leaner?] > You might want to give Mandrake 8.0 a chance. We had some problems with Mandrake (so some of our Linux specials at our physics department say that if RedHat then the original not the copy [Mandrake is based on RedHat]). Since we want to switch the OS of our computer pool from FreeBSD to Linux we also have now this problem of the right distribution: RedHat, SuSE or Debian. I think for you Hans, Debias wouldn't be the best choice since it is an "expert" distribution ;-) > If you have an > NVidia video chipset, you need to download the latest drivers from > http://www.nvidia.com/Products/Drivers.nsf/Linux.html > and follow the instructions for "generic RPM distributions" This cannot be packed by Linux distributions due to copyright problems ... > HH> In any case i want a running linux/x for testing context on > HH> linux. > What do you need X for? For having more than one console at a time (you don't really want to suggest to split the console, do you) and for XDVI/acroread etc. > You just need teTeX, Perl and an a shell > ... If you feel confused by the command line, give Midnight > Commander (mc) a chance. mc is a kind of Norton Commander, but I think Hans is not that fast confused ;-) > HH> [if i can get my old dos-extender stuff working on win200 i > HH> will stick to windows anyway since graphics are better there] > (What do you mean "graphics are better"? Are you talking about the > cute icons?) Well Windows does support antialised fonts -- Unix doesn't (XFree86 4.1.x has the render extentions which can be used by Qt and Gtk+ (latter to come). Moreover the fonts of X11 are rather bad (almost only bitmap fonts). (You can use MS TT fonts ;-) Taco Hoekwater wrote: > > I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop again my > > video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way behind > > windows]. I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with starting > > the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers are supposed to run > > on newer drivers? > Yes, they should. Most likely cause: incorrect (read: partial) update to > Xfree4. So think I. > likely problems: > - Suse is confused about what to run > - The server itself (the "X" executable) is still the old one > - The Config file is broken/missing (XF4 uses /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 ) SuSE: /etc/X11/XF86Config for 4.x /etc/XF86Config for 3.x but the ...-4 is also found (see man page). > - Dynamic library problems. > Do you get any kind of error when you start X? You can also look at /var/log/XFree86.0.log Tobias