need linux help

[Volitions Advocate]

Why am I posting less and less about guitars lately?
Don worry guys Iĺl get into the swing of things again this summer.  at least for some hardware and pups.

but for now I have a new problem.

After getting all huffed up about the PS3 removing its ¨otherOS¨ functionality I decided to suck it up, install the PS3 update, and just get a full fledged linux install on my main box. I had an extra 500 gig HD that was not being used anyway.

So since I'm taking an Audio Engineering and music degree I figured I'd find a distro that was cohesive to that sort of stuff, because I had heard about some open source DAW software (other than Audacity) that was quite popular on Linux.

So I was turned to 2 distros. aGNUla/Demudi or Ubuntu Studio. I ended up choosing Ubuntu Studio because apparently aGNUla wasn't being actively developed anymore.

It installed like a dream and is working great. I just have a couple of noob problems to deal with I was hoping maybe somebody on here might have experience with.

First thing is that I'm running ATI graphics, and i've installed the ATI driver, but I have that ugly watermark in the bottom corner of the screen saying that the hardware isn't supported, This has been reported as a bug and people say to just roll back the drivers to fix it. The problem is I have no idea how to roll back the driver. I don't yet know how to install programs from the terminal so downloading it isn't an option for me yet. I'm used to using the software repositories just like Cygwin uses, but there is no option for rolling back the driver.

I'm also trying to get Beryl or Compiz or whatever the hell it's called installed, but finding info on that newer than 2 or 3 years old is basically impossible.

My problem is that I've never used Linux with a GUI before, and all i ever did on it was screw around in emacs and write dumb little programs that do nothing of importance in the real world. So I don't even know how to use all the advanced console commands.

The distro came with Ardour, the open source DAW, but I want to uninstall it and rebuild it from source code so that I can use VST plugins (from windows) which is not a default option when installing from the repository.
thing is I don't know how to do this. I'm sure I dont just "make ardour". It's got to be a little bit more complex than that.

Also,, my last issue is with GRUB. The nice thing is that I have my OS's installed on different hard drives. but the order is a little messed up. I've been running Windows 7 from hd2, hd1 is my storage drive and ubuntu is now installed on hd0 with GRUB. So i redirected my bios to look at hd0 for the bootloader rather than hd2. But I need windows to be at the top of the list rather than linux, My wife uses this computer and she won't know how to use linux at all. I don't really know how to use the editing commands in GRUB to change the order of the list.

I'm looking for the info myself as well as posting this, I"m not asking for a handout here, but the information Is spread all over and some of it isn't up to date. And I"ve found that being up to date is pretty important with how fast the linux community churns out new programming. If anybody has a good site to help me out I'd be grateful, or if you've dealt with these problems yourself I'd be happy to accept some advice.

I know there are a couple of you guys on here that are penguin users.

And I promise in a couple of months (when I move into our first house that we just bought) that i will start talking about guitars again!

 

[Dan025]

i think dbw can help or cb try to pm one of them. i am just as new to linux as you and have experienced many of the same issues, i just dont have a grasp for how it operates yet. my brother is a big linux guru but asking him anything can be a problem.

i think you may be able to get the grub thing fixed if you just google it, i think that is a fairly simple thing to do. but as far as installing things without using a package manager i'm really lost, there seems to be many ways to do it and i can never get through a tutorial without a problem and dont really understand what is really is that im doing in each step. i have now installed linux in a VM so i can learn and i have the option to have a web browser open in windows on my other monitor so i can google things without leaving what im doing

for the drivers have you tried an ndis wrapper and a windows driver? i got that to work on a wireless card once but dont remember how.

i know i haven't been any real help.

 

[Volitions Advocate]

yeah... see you say ndis and I say buh?

If you really want to learn the terminal and you are running windows try cygwin.  Its kind of like wine but the other way around,  it has a package manager and everything just like linux. So far I have found it quite useful.

And I sound like Data because I can t get apostrophes for some reason. 

 

[Dan025]

the learning curve for linux/unix based stuff is weird when you grew up on dos and windows. the way thing are run and the system is organized are like reading and writing in kanji to me. hell i dont know if i spelled kanji right. the japanese hiragana and katakana are weird enough but i couldn't even imagine growing up in japan and learning all 3 written languages.

there goes my ADD again, im learning this stuff very slowly as i keep losing interest. if i cant just click an icon or type the name of an executable and have things work i get frustrated. i know that when i understand the way of things it wont seem so complicated but it is not as easy for me now as when i was a kid. if i tried learning unix when i was 10 i'd be ok but i'm just too used to windows at this point. the big problem is that a lot of software is compatable with many distributions of linux if you are smart enough to get it installed in the first place, but there are so many distributions that some things are not available as a package for the one you are running.

i want to convert a mill to CNC in the future. i have the software to interperate the standard g-codes and give a fanuc like interface to make it familiar to machinists but it is only available in a package for two distribution of ubuntu and i cant find a package for cad/cam software that i like for the same distributions.

with the ndiswrapper you use drivers for widows xp. it's kinda cool that you can do that but i only did it once and was following directions verbatim off a tutorial. i ont have a need for that right now either as im running in a VM in windows now, i decided i need to learn to use linux before i go back to a dual boot setup.

when i figure out what the hell im doing i would like to try compiz too but i cant help you now. 

 

[-CB-]

Gonna offer apologies... I'm into the redHat distros for about 10 years now, and its a stand alone server.  Basically handles HTTP, FTP, and Windows domain tasks.  Used to run OpenNap (ahem) but my assets are such that risking them for that frivolity has precluded continued use.

 

[Volitions Advocate]

OpenNap..... *reads* ... an open source server...  makes sense that it would be full of security holes.

Ubuntu i believe is based on debian.  I really dont know the difference behind a lot of these distros.  I fugured it would be largely the same since everybody uses the same kernel...  dont they?  or is that distro specific too?