Re: linux question

[Mohit Agarwal <mohit@cfdlab.aero.iisc.ernet.in>]

*** Hans Hagen wrote in conTeXt list today at 10:55 +0200:

: 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?

No, linux is not behind windoughs.  I've faced problems due to Intel
motherboards (specifically D815EEA), but the X configuration has never
been a problem, there have been problems configuring the sound card,
though.  What drivers do you have?  The updates for linux are far more
rapid than windoughs, so running a window manager shouldn't be a problem.
Specific things can surely be answered on the XFree86.org list (the
archives might as well help); please see

   http://www.xfree86.org/mailman/listinfo

: [I use suse7.1 but am slowly getting sick of the enourmous bunch of window
: stuff installed/loaded and getting rid of it seems impossible, so i wonder
: if i should continue with suse anyway. Are the otherw linux's leaner?] In
: any case i want a running linux/x for testing context on linux. [if i can
: get my old dos-extender stuff working on win200 i will stick to windows
: anyway since graphics are better there]

Please switch over from Suse to other linux distributions, but *not* to
windoughs.  Debian should be a nice option (woody should be realeased soon
;-), even Mandrake is not bad.  Well, these days most of the distributions
are really huge, but there are several things that you won't need.  If you
select the packages yourself, it shouldn't be big.  I don't quite tend to
agree that graphics are better on windoughs, no.  If linux is configured
properly, then you have a lot of utilities that can't be imagined
otherwise.  For instance, you have the ImageMagick utilities, which
provide commands like `convert', `animate' which are really powerful.

mohit