Linux

[Bacon]

Alright, so i bought a laptop, and not to my suprise XP will not install on it. I get a bluescreen error before the licence agreement at setup, so it's an issue with the harddrive controller im guessing. I downloaded drivers from intel for it, and slipstreamed them into my xp install, however it still didnt cure the problem. Im ready to give up on trying to get XP to work.

I've used linux in the past, once. I had SuSE 9.whatever it is, also had tried 10.0, however at the time I had an ATI card and apparently they dont work great in linux, long story short I ended up going back to XP. Ive also tried gentoo and slackware.

However this laptop uses an nvidia, so it sounded promising.

Basically what i am wondering, what is a nice distro nowadays? Im leaning towards ubuntu, especially after searching through older topics here on it. I am open to other distros as well but heres what I want to be able to do.

-Internet
-Quake 3
-GTK Radiant
-Blender
-3D Studio max
-UT2004/Starcraft/DOOM (old doom) and Duke Nukem 3D (These last 4 arent IMPORTANT but I still enjoy playing them time to time.

So basically i would like to know:

-Is there ANY way of getting XP on this machine? I can provide more info if needed
-If not, whats the most optimal linux distro for me (Non GUI installer is ok)
-Windows emulation, for the older games I have, what;'s the status on that kind of thing

Thanks

Edit: Vista is not an option, to clarify

[+JuggerNaut+]

try ubuntu on it first, live

[Bacon]

try ubuntu on it first, live

read that as I was editing my post, started..

Also wondering, I have a 64 bit processor, is the 64 bit version better for me to use?

[Therac-25]

Also wondering, I have a 64 bit processor, is the 64 bit version better for me to use?

doesn't much matter, unless you have large amounts of ram (>3G), or have other specific software needs. it can be faster in some cases, slower in some cases.

unless you have enough ram that it matters, i wouldn't bother.

[^misantropia^]

Well, 64 bits processors have a slew of extra registers. If you're doing computationally intensive stuff, say rendering, that can speed up things quite a bit.

[^misantropia^]

Oh, and to answer Bacon's question: install Ubuntu + VirtualBox, then install XP and games in a VirtualBox image.

[Fender]

Any distro have good & easy touch screen support?

[+JuggerNaut+]

Oh, and to answer Bacon's question: install Ubuntu + VirtualBox, then install XP and games in a VirtualBox image.

bAm

[Foo]

what model of laptop and what driver did you slipstream?

[Bacon]

what model of laptop and what driver did you slipstream?

Sony VGN-AW120D I used SATA drivers for the harddrive from toshiba + intel matrix storage drivers (AHCI Controller), Still get BSOD with both of those slipstreamed into it.

BSOD is STOP:0x0000007D or 7E then a few more 0x00000000's

[Bacon]

Well, I have ubuntu up and running, but im having some very bad first impressions already, primarily because of the sound..

Sound worked great, until I muted it, then tried to unmute it later on, sound is gone, not sure how to fix it.

Quake 3 also seems to not have proper mouseaccel or something because even a value of 1 makes the mouse fly to the lft or the right if you touch it..

Im impressed with how fast things load on linux, the security, and the driver support but im already having issues with it :S

[^misantropia^]

Quake 3 also seems to not have proper mouseaccel or something because even a value of 1 makes the mouse fly to the lft or the right if you touch it..

Open a terminal and type `xset mouse 0 0`. You can configure it in a control panel too, but I forgot where that option lives (don't use Ubuntu or Gnome myself).

Use ioquake3 if you can, it reads mouse data using a far more modern protocol. But if you have to use iD's stock build, try setting in_dgamouse to 1 or 0 (see what works best for you), followed by a /in_restart.

[^misantropia^]

Sound worked great, until I muted it, then tried to unmute it later on, sound is gone, not sure how to fix it.

amixer set Master 100%
amixer set PCM 100%