Slashdot Mirror

However, open-source drivers work much better on Linux systems than proprietary drivers;

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the Nvidia binary driver works better than Nouveau does. I'm currently running a GT640 rev2 under Fedora 21. Previously I ran a GT220 and a 6150SE.

the proprietary ones usually take extra work to install, they break on updates, etc.,

When you read of some guy's Nvidia drivers breaking on updates, it means he did things the HARD way and installed the ".run" package from Nvidia's website manually instead of taking the Easy Button way of using their distro's package manager.

On Fedora, if you're using a card supported by the current driver, it's as easy as:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

And then:

su c- 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

or you can click these two links in your web browser to install the repos

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

and THEN do the 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

However, open-source drivers work much better on Linux systems than proprietary drivers;

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the Nvidia binary driver works better than Nouveau does. I'm currently running a GT640 rev2 under Fedora 21. Previously I ran a GT220 and a 6150SE.

the proprietary ones usually take extra work to install, they break on updates, etc.,

When you read of some guy's Nvidia drivers breaking on updates, it means he did things the HARD way and installed the ".run" package from Nvidia's website manually instead of taking the Easy Button way of using their distro's package manager.

On Fedora, if you're using a card supported by the current driver, it's as easy as:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

And then:

su c- 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

or you can click these two links in your web browser to install the repos

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

and THEN do the 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

However, open-source drivers work much better on Linux systems than proprietary drivers;

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the Nvidia binary driver works better than Nouveau does. I'm currently running a GT640 rev2 under Fedora 21. Previously I ran a GT220 and a 6150SE.

the proprietary ones usually take extra work to install, they break on updates, etc.,

When you read of some guy's Nvidia drivers breaking on updates, it means he did things the HARD way and installed the ".run" package from Nvidia's website manually instead of taking the Easy Button way of using their distro's package manager.

On Fedora, if you're using a card supported by the current driver, it's as easy as:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

And then:

su c- 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

or you can click these two links in your web browser to install the repos

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

and THEN do the 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

However, open-source drivers work much better on Linux systems than proprietary drivers;

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the Nvidia binary driver works better than Nouveau does. I'm currently running a GT640 rev2 under Fedora 21. Previously I ran a GT220 and a 6150SE.

the proprietary ones usually take extra work to install, they break on updates, etc.,

When you read of some guy's Nvidia drivers breaking on updates, it means he did things the HARD way and installed the ".run" package from Nvidia's website manually instead of taking the Easy Button way of using their distro's package manager.

On Fedora, if you're using a card supported by the current driver, it's as easy as:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org... -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

And then:

su c- 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

or you can click these two links in your web browser to install the repos

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

http://download1.rpmfusion.org...

and THEN do the 'yum install akmod-nvidia'

KDE on Fedora isn't too awful. It's gotten a lot better since about Fedora 19. In fact, it works much better for me than the default GNOME option. I believe KDE is handled by a dedicated team, so it's certainly not the afterthought it used to be. As for patented codecs, I just make sure RPM Fusion's non-free repo is enabled and I have access to cleanly packaged codecs as needed. Just install the gstreamer packages and you'll have everything you need.

You'll have a hard time finding a US-based or other major distribution supporting aac, h.264, and similar directly because of software patents that require payments to the license holder. It's why Ubuntu and Fedora both ship without that kind of support.

yum install exfat-utils fuse-exfat

For others trying this: exfat-utils and fuse-exfat are in RPM Fusion because patent issues block their inclusion with Fedora.

You assume more restrictions than what is actually available or possible.

I agree that there is no technical restriction. But political restrictions can still be relevant, especially when it comes to bringing the required parts through United States customs. The MGM v. Grokster decision enshrined secondary liability through inducement in U.S. case law, and including the SDXC marking could be seen as inducement to infringe a patent by installing the exFAT packages.

yum install exfat-utils fuse-exfat

For others trying this: exfat-utils and fuse-exfat are in RPM Fusion because patent issues block their inclusion with Fedora.

You assume more restrictions than what is actually available or possible.

I agree that there is no technical restriction. But political restrictions can still be relevant, especially when it comes to bringing the required parts through United States customs. The MGM v. Grokster decision enshrined secondary liability through inducement in U.S. case law, and including the SDXC marking could be seen as inducement to infringe a patent by installing the exFAT packages.

It should be this easy on ALL linux distros. Here's a screencap of me installing the latest NVidia drivers on Lubuntu the other day:
http://youtu.be/49iq5A8d0e4

Yeah. That was like super-easy and I'm sure many Windows or OS X users would be impressed..

Also what's up with the lack of usage of the tab key, the multiple clears and I guess it would had helped if you had made sure the commands actually gave the results you where after in the first place + the warning at the beginning about a distribution specific pre-installation script failing.

As for FreeBSD:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/compiz-fusion/nvidia-setup.html

Or openSUSE:
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers#Easy_way_to_get_NVIDIA_drivers

Ubuntu:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

Fedora don't seem to be all that user friendly in this regard:
http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2013/fedora-18-nvidia-guide/
http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia#GeForce_8_and_newer

Archlinux guide is a little longer.. But also cover much more:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA
Like I remember a recent thread on Slashdot where this likely would had been helpful:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA#Base_mosaic

On the rpmfusion.org website is a mention of rpmfusion spins. The most recent entry is a spin of Fedora 18, created in Russia.
This spin has all the codecs that you would find with Ubuntu, includes chromium, flash player, and libdvdcss2 (ask about it).
There are some extras too, in the way of tools for developers.
I was a skeptic, but when I installed it last January 15th, 2012, I did not know what to expect. What I got was a super stable release, with everything in it that I needed for a desktop and laptop.
http://rpmfusion.org/Spins and under it
RFRemix

RFRemix is a Linux distribution developing in Russia and based on Fedora, RPM Fusion and Russian Fedora repositories. All codecs, flash and proprietary video drivers are available from the box. Your can download installable DVDs and LiveCDs with GNOME, KDE, XFCE and LXDE. DVD contains full language packs as in original Fedora. Default language for LiveCD is Russian, but it can be changed.

I selected the DVD which is in English, and after the installation was complete, I pointed Chromium to my preferred website(s).
All Fedora operating system updates are from Fedora and rpmfusion.

When you get any Linux distribution that is anyway related to Redhat such a Fedora you don't get any software which potentially infringes software patents however all you need to do is install the rpmfusion-free and rpmfusion-nonfree yum repo files from here and you can do just about do anything that a Microsoft OS can do although if you have a Microsoft OS you may also have to hunt for software as well although considering the flexible and reliable installation/update tools that Linux has I know which one I would use.

For those using Ubuntu then apt-get will do the same as yum and if you don't like the command line each install/update tool has a very nice graphical interface that is very intuitive.

You could simply use it as a desktop. Linux has grown leaps and leaps and leaps forward and in many ways ahead of the Mac as a desktop, so read on.

KDE SC 4.5 (about to be released in a few days/weeks) is leaps ahead of the Mac OS X 10.5 GUI. The only catch is that it is not minimalistic. If you want minimalism you have to pick Gnome with Gnome DO and set it to act like a docky. Put a Mac OS X wallpaper in place and install a Mac OS X theme. However KDE has focussed on more minimalism since KDE4 without sacrificing features.

There is a KDE application for video editing that is unparalleled: Kdenlive: http://www.kdenlive.org/
It slaughters Sony Vegas in functionality and is free of charge too. It may not be stable enough yet (version 0.7) so it might be a little bit of a bumpy ride at first.

There is also a kick-ass music management application: AmaroK: http://amarok.kde.org/
It is compatible with iPods that are not of the latest generation (USB encryption crap)

KDE SC's default webbrowser is Konqueror, which, since KDE SC 4.5 also has WebKit support.
Google's Chrome is now also runnable on Linux.
If you don't like the Google privacy stuff than search for the Iron browser (they took the Chrome's source code and stripped it from any call home functionality)

For managing photo's, use DigiKam: http://www.digikam.org/

Personal information management: KDE PIM

For personal finance: http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html

Office work isn't Linux' best aspect, so you could install OpenOffice.org. It is however the best Office Suit available for the PPC. It doesn't look all that good if your distro of choice hasn't supplied their own KDE4 integration into it.

Now there are a lot of distributions, so what should you pick?
The best and most stable KDE4 distro I have ever tried is Fedora. The default download option is with Gnone so search for a PPC KDE version. Because Fedora core is not using anything that is even remotely patented, you have to go to the RPMFusion website to add Adobe's Flash, MP3 and QuickTime codecs and whatnot: http://rpmfusion.org/RPM%20Fusion

You can see pick your download here: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/12/
The Problem I am seeing here is that the current version of Fedora is 13 and the latest PPC64 builds are for Fedora 12. This leads to a little outdated software (1 year).

Doesn't Ubuntu also require you to enable some extra repo to get mp3s working? Otherwise I think they'd be violating US patent laws if they put that stuff on the install CD. Fedora gives you the option of enabling additional repos (like RPM Fusion, for mp3) at install time, so you don't have to worry about how to add those repos later.

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Retrieving http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

warning: /var/tmp/rpm-xfer.hIiu76: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 49c8885a

error: Failed dependencies:

system-release >= 10 is needed by rpmfusion-free-release-10-5.noarch

I am sure I am missing something obvious....

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Retrieving http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

warning: /var/tmp/rpm-xfer.hIiu76: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 49c8885a

error: Failed dependencies:

system-release >= 10 is needed by rpmfusion-free-release-10-5.noarch

I am sure I am missing something obvious....

Well it's certainly easier now since all the "restricted" repositories are now in one place - RPM Fusion.

Except for the package libdvdcss, which could not be included into RPM Fusion and is still sitting in Livna.

It's never been difficult to add Dag and Livna, but it's now even easier: http://rpmfusion.org/ I really liked the polish of Fedora 9, it was a huge step up from 8. Hopefully Fedora 10 continues in that direction.

RPM Fusion is getting pretty darn good http://rpmfusion.org/ Just one RPM to install manually, and you can get all the "evil" stuff very easily... plus, haven't tested it yet, but the new hooks in Totem should make the process pretty much automatic.

Does it come with easy access to the "restricted" repositories?

Well it's certainly easier now since all the "restricted" repositories are now in one place - RPM Fusion. So you just install the rpmfusion rpm and then you get access to all the goodies. Not too sure how this is presented GUI-wise though.