Linux and NVidia and XP?

HIyas Everyone,

I've been dual booting WinXP and Vista for about a year now. Vista has lost it's "shine" and I'm getting my hdd ready to purge it. I would like to dual boot WinXP and a Linux OS. I have a 8600GTS which looks like NVidia supports (linux). I did dual boot Fedora and XP a whiles back but I never did run SL on Fedora. What linux OS would be a good combo with NVidia to run SL and to dual boot with XP? Curious to know if only certain ones work or if there are favs or if there are some to avoid. Thanx

Good riddance to bad rubbish, eh?

It is certainly supported and works well.

The best of the best is, as always, openSUSE. One special beauty is the fact that the nVidia (and ATI) binary-only (non-open-source) drivers are available for installation via the same software management system used for the kernel, other drivers and system and application software. It couldn't be simpler to install the nVidia driver and to keep it up-to-date as nVidia releases new versions.

Several work, but favorites? Of course!


Rudy

In french, we call that a 'troll' (a malicious creature that love making conflictual situations). I'd be very curious to know what word is used in english.

In my opinion, you can use one of the most important linux distrib without problem. The only real difference between them will be the feeling you have with (to run SL, not for more specific things).
Nvidia drivers are also available from the packaging system in Debian and Ubuntu. I don't know for Fedora but I doubt it makes any problems.

You should have no trouble with any of the big 3: SUSE, Fedora or Ubuntu. These different flavours of linux are known as "distributions" or "distros", so if you hear people talking about their favourite distro, you'll know what they are talking about.

I prefer Ubuntu because of it's "just works" approach to Linux and because it's based on Debian (which I would run if I had time to fiddle).

Fedora is probably the better choice if you are concerned about installing proprietary software, but you'll probably need to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers anyway to get acceptable performance.

SUSE has traditionally had a strong emphasis providing their own additional applications customized versions of standard apps, these might work better than the more standard ones you will find in the other distrbutions.

My advice, try them all out if you have the time, if not - pick the one that sounds best and don't worry too much about it - the performance doesn't really vary much between them if you're using similar versions of the standard software components.

/Mike

It's the same: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

Though I doubt Rudy is one. He might just not be aware that isn't specific to openSuSE.

<flame mode="ubertroll">U5E gentoo!!!!!!!! IT CANZ D0 ALL THATH 2 & EV3N M0R3!!!! & HAZ TEH emerge world COMMAND, TEHT RUL3Z!!!</flame>

...i'd suggest using a linux distribution where you can install SL through the normal package management.

as far as i know, that means debian-based, or openSUSE (I'm building packages for openSUSE, but so far i dont have a decent spot to offer them for download yet)...

Get thee to the openSUSE Build Service! You'll have fans for life if you provide openSUSE SL packages (myself included!).

https://build.opensuse.org/


Rudy

Speaking of trolls...

There's a pretty good article on Linux graphics here, with some discussion of video drivers : http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-gritty-shit-on-open-source.html and http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-way-or-sane-way.html

.

Thanx everyone!

I opted for openSuse 11. I have it installed, now to get SL running in it. That Vista bootloader did a number on my XP partition and I had to do a fresh install (even GParted couldn't do anything with it). I am so glad I had everything backed up... lol!

okies... I'm up and running on 1.19.1.4! Install of the NVidia drivers was so nice. I'm gonna try the RC next. This is so much better than the Win client versions. I have my graphics settings almost all maxed out. Need to figure some filtering though on the video. I didn't look for or install and 32 bit libraries (everything seems to be okies). I still need to catch up on everything but do I need 32 bit libraries to run properly?