Made the Jump to Karmic Koala

Volitions Advocate on 11/4/2010 at 04:00

Hey.

After getting all huffed up about the PS3 otherOS thing I decided to suck it up, install the 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 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, but I want to uninstall it and rebuild it from source 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. :)

LeatherMan on 11/4/2010 at 05:56

I have never owned an ATI card due to their lack of support in Linux, but rolling back the drivers should be pretty straight-forward. Look in the (http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Karmic#Synaptic_Package_Manager) Synaptic package manager and install an older driver version from what is currently installed.

To rebuild Ardour, it is the same as for any other Linux Distro, so follow their (http://ardour.org/building) instructions. There may be a few packages you'll need to install, but one package you'll definitely need is "build-essential".

Beryl and Compiz merged to become (http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Karmic#Compiz_Fusion) Compiz Fusion.

For the Grub issue, use (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/StartUpManager) Startup-Manager.

HTH :)

jay pettitt on 11/4/2010 at 10:49

If your Koala is anything like my Koala then the easiest way to pick and choose graphics card drivers is to head on up to the System menu with your mouse pointer - pick Administration, then Hardware Drivers. It should display a list of recentish hardware drivers for your graphics card - pick a different one and see what happens.

Though I'm sure you can grab them from Synaptic package manager also.

Volitions Advocate on 11/4/2010 at 15:28

Those links did help, thanks. As far as compiz goes, I kept getting tut's that were a couple years old and poitned to the wrong online source.

and yeah.. for the drivers. I was using the "hardware drivers" program and It only showed me the one up to date driver. (they sure make a stink when you dont use something open source) but it also shows up in the "add/remove programs" , I haven't been able to find it in the package manager though. I'll go have a closer look.