Weekend Update
Jun. 17th, 2006 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuLinux (SuSE 10.1, in particular) is an excellent operating system. It is not, however, perfect. It comes with a generic driver for my video card (ATI Radeon) which supports 2D but doesn't support the highest-end 3D graphics. To get that, you have to download and install the proprietary drivers produced by the video card's makers. This is not a simple procedure.
Not for yours truly, anyhow. More experienced users of Linux might argue. Anyhow, I tried it, following some detailed instructions on improving the overall usefulness of the OS's handling of multimedia formats. (For legal reasons, linux software that will handle Shockwave, Flash, Windows Media Format, Quicktime and the like, either aren't included in the OS distro at all, or is limited. If you want to handle all that, it's up to you as the end user to find and install the needed codecs and other software.) Everything else worked like a charm, but the video driver had some unexpected and undesirable effects on my video output and some other software (all the extensions I use in Firefox stopped working for no reason that I could determine).
And I couldn't figure out (or find out) how to resolve the problem.
So after making sure all my important documents and files were backed up, I reinstalled the OS from scratch. I just now finished the online updates as well. So my computer is a lean, mean net-surfing machine. All the extraneous programs I've installed (by disk or download) but didn't like or never use anymore are gone. It's just the basic operating system, Firefox (and its extensions), OpenOffice (word processor, spreadsheet, database, etc.) and my documents and pictures.
The process isn't especially time-consuming (considering that I've completely reinstalled the OS and plus the other programs), and it went quite smoothly. FAR more smoothly than was my experience with reinstalling Windows operating systems. Now it's done and I can get back to the important things I do with my computer.
Like, you know, chronicling the minutia of my life on livejournal....
Not for yours truly, anyhow. More experienced users of Linux might argue. Anyhow, I tried it, following some detailed instructions on improving the overall usefulness of the OS's handling of multimedia formats. (For legal reasons, linux software that will handle Shockwave, Flash, Windows Media Format, Quicktime and the like, either aren't included in the OS distro at all, or is limited. If you want to handle all that, it's up to you as the end user to find and install the needed codecs and other software.) Everything else worked like a charm, but the video driver had some unexpected and undesirable effects on my video output and some other software (all the extensions I use in Firefox stopped working for no reason that I could determine).
And I couldn't figure out (or find out) how to resolve the problem.
So after making sure all my important documents and files were backed up, I reinstalled the OS from scratch. I just now finished the online updates as well. So my computer is a lean, mean net-surfing machine. All the extraneous programs I've installed (by disk or download) but didn't like or never use anymore are gone. It's just the basic operating system, Firefox (and its extensions), OpenOffice (word processor, spreadsheet, database, etc.) and my documents and pictures.
The process isn't especially time-consuming (considering that I've completely reinstalled the OS and plus the other programs), and it went quite smoothly. FAR more smoothly than was my experience with reinstalling Windows operating systems. Now it's done and I can get back to the important things I do with my computer.
Like, you know, chronicling the minutia of my life on livejournal....
