Blog of FacePwning

Well I managed to semi-hose my Server 2008 install (no idea what.. but it only works half the time now!). So I decided to *try* ubuntu. I’m not linux pro, but I’ve used it quite a bit (usually on servers), and usually when I try on my desktop it fails (I never seem to be able to get my dual monitors working :().

Then I found out about Envy, a program that finds the proper nvidia driver for you (8800gts in my case), then installs it. Before I was going to the nvidia site and downloading their drivers, but that would always fail (something about 64bit ubuntu and nvidia = fail). After envy did it’s stuff, I went into nvidia-settings, enabled my other monitor, set up the proper resolutions, told it to write to xorg.conf, then rebooted.. and it worked! Apart from a few applications that don’t like twinview (I’m looking at *you* VLC), it works without any problems at all.

Half life 2/Half life 2 deathmatch work 100% fine with wine, other then fullscreen seems to not work as well (probably because of twinview) all my devices worked, even my logitech easycall desktop, which worked as soon as I started skype up and told it which sound device to use. As for everything else, there seems to be a Linux equivalent that works nicely. The only thing that gives me problems is the 64bit flash plugin for firefox, since flash has no 64bit linux plugin, it needs to use a wrapper around the 32bit one, which makes it use a lot more resources, but most everything still runs fine.

To wrap it up, I think i’ll be staying with ubuntu for a bit longer then I did server 2008 (no promises though ;). Ubuntu is getting better and better with every release, and it’s quite pleasant to use (compiz is awesome, much better then Vista!)

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.