Just joined Second Life

Hi all,
I've just joined Second Life, and wanted to know whether the Linux client is stable enough to use? I have access only to Linux systems. I have noticed strange artifacts in the graphics and very slow responsiveness that made it quite difficult to complete the orientation island. I do not know if this is due to network problems, my graphic card, or the fact I'm using Linux. Is this the standard Second Life experience?

For completeness, my system details:
LAPTOP: Lenovo Thinkpad Z60t (2511-FFG)
Distribution: Debian testing
Graphic Card: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.00GHz
RAM: 1.5GB
Network: 1.5Mb/s DSL via WiFi.

The Linux-Client is running very well here. When I compare it to the Windows-Client on the same machine, I personally think it's even better when it comes to performance.

I am not really into graphics-chips, but possibly your graphic-chip isn't powerful enough. Do you use any 3D-Games on that machine?
Or maybe you don't have the 3D hardware acceleration active?

If you are using xOrg drivers, it will be very slow, though also very stable. Closed drivers will give a 4x or more boost to performance, but the ATI/AMD closed drivers have some serious stability issues that take a LOT of tweaking in the xOrg.conf. I believe nVidia is better, though I am sure it has its own quirks. There are sample xOrg.conf files scattered about this board for most major graphics cards.

The SL grid has had - at least for me - serious issues with packet loss in recent weeks. I believe it is something to do with splitting their server farm across multiple sites. This has rendered SL almost unusable for me a number of times on the past few weeks, though LindenLabs seems to be getting quicker at pouncing on the packet-loss issues, if nothing else.

You could try searching for then teleporting to the sim called "Lynx" - it is an empty sim ATM and runs wonderfully fast

You could also minimise all your graphics effects (though I find the performance difference between min/max values for most settings makes little difference for me speed-wise as it is my CPU holding me back, not my graphics card). Reducing Draw Distance way down DOES make a big difference, though - both in the amount of data your graphics card has to process and the amount of data that has to be pushed from the server.

Finally, SL in general runs slower than more structured 3-D games as LindenLabs doesn't have the control to make sure that there are only so many objects of a particular type in view at any one time (off-the-cd games are very carefully laid-out to keep graphics load fairly consistent).

Just want to confirm that the Linux client performs very well. For me at least. And much better in the last month when texture uploads became easier.

I also have the problems, I think, with the split server farms and some kind of data lag. (Not a Linux issue though.)

Use it.

For the core bread-and-butter functionality, the alpha is as good as a late beta (personal opinion). Some crashes, but nothing damaging in my experience. Some visits to SL I forget it *is* an alpha. Things Just Work.

Running on Slackware 10.2 w/ latest updates/patches.

I too am new and it took me a few hours to get xorg.conf set up and drivers and various other issues, but once I got it going it is working -awesome-

There are a couple small problems which I am not sure as to the cause. When I press F1 for help, nothing happens, when I use the help menu to bring up the help, nothing happens. Also, I am not loading the webpages from the game. When it asks to bring up a webpage and I say yes, nothing happens.

These are very small problems though, since I have plenty of access to help by other means and can manually enter webpages =)

This is actually because Mozilla integration is not done on linux yet.

The Linux client is very good indeed, but you're using an intel chipset, which probably is the source of your problems. Even on Windows the intel chipset is performing very poorly and trashes textures every now and then. I have not been able to get SL running on Linux with i915 at all myself

I hear that SL is geared towards Mac users? How much better does it run on Macs? I am getting a new laptop and am maybe thinking about getting a Mac >.<

If anything, SL is geared towards Windows XP users

Are you sure about that? I heard from some people IG who have been here since the foundation that the Lindens are Mac geeks and it works best for Macs, this isn't true?

edit: been searching through the forums and it seems there are a lot of people who agree with you =)

I'm running Ubuntu (Edgy). It works flawlessly out of the box. Well, sorta. You just have to install the nvidia drivers which you can do in 5 seconds with apt-get... then you're good to go. If you don't have nvidia then you suck ;P

Yes, the brand of video card you choose to purchase does indeed define how cool you are as a person.

I'll keep this in mind. :D