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old nebie comes to linux - cshe - 2009-08-04


Just retired and wanting to save money i got my son's unrelible windows vista system working but wanted to get away from Microsoft so I found Fedora 11 with lots of god write ups.

Had trouble creating cd but when this was finally sorted,ran from live d.I was very impressed, especially when my memory stick just opened up with none of the windows palaver.I think it's brilliant how the downloads look after themselves and go straight to the want to run window and don't just lie in the download box but of course this could be just the beta version of Firefox(3.5)

I was also impressed bythe speed of everything.So I installed the operating system to hard drive, changed the bios back to default- reading from hard drive and not cd I then restarted the machine- I had to do it many times before it booted .

Since then I have a few sudden shutdowns and very erratic start-ups also system slowing right down or freezing.It's working fine right now but I expect the same probs to repeat themselves.Also various graphics have broken up on the screen.I downloaded adobe flash for linusrpm and the pages opened butthe graphics and even some of the text broke up on the page.I used the WE7 website and the sound came thru fine but he screen was again all broken up- I'm sure it's not my computer because with vista on it I didn't have this problem,Also when booting up I get the messageMP bios bug 8254.I've seen this reported in a few forums but no answers so far.

Finally where should I start to begin to understand Fedora or Linux language .The documentation is hard to follow .Any help would be very appreciated .Please be gentle .I know nothing!



old nebie comes to linux - Dungeon-Dave - 2009-08-04


There isn't a "Fedora" or "Linux" language, but there is definitely a community of people out there that can advise on things.

 

One such advice I'll give is to treat your new OS as though it was "Windows 9" or so - consider what type of application you would use (browser, mail client, media player etc) then have a google around at what is on offer. You'll find many Linux equivilents of Windows software, many of which are cross-platform (Firefox and VLC being two of them).

 

Good luck, and don't forget that this forum is intended to help and support noobs of all ages/walks of life!



old nebie comes to linux - znx - 2009-08-04


It is always good to hear people going out to experiment with Linux. You had a couple of hurdles and have happily taken them on, which others would probably have baulked at. The direct run option on Firefox has been present since early versions and indeed IE has similar functionality. The speed of the system is normally down to the fact that Linux doesn't require 2Gb of RAM just to run unlike Vista :)!

 

I believe that BIOS bug you are experiencing could be fixed by appending some options to your kernel boot line. If you are using Grub for the boot loader (you probably are) then you need to edit the configuration file for it. Either noapic or nolapic or maybe even both.

 

Edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf and look for the line beginning with kernel, then add the options to the end. For instance:



Code:
kernel /vmlinuz-VERSION ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb noapic nolapic




 

By the way, APIC = Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers ;) and check out these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_APIC_Architecture#Hardware_Bugs and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8259

 

APIC was a cause of unusual freezing and sudden deaths a few times for myself, it can actually cause lots of sorts of strangeness on your system, so might be the cause of the graphics issue as well.

 

It is always difficult to point people in a direction to try and get documentation of systems. If there is one thing that truly lacks in Linux is it comprehensive user-friendly documentation. Fortunately there are places like here to try and assist you.



old nebie comes to linux - cshe - 2009-08-05


thanks for the replies.

Znx:

You wrote

Edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf and look for the line beginning with kernel, then add the options to the end. For instance:

 

kernel /vmlinuz-VERSION ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb noapic nolapic

 

I don't know where to write this - if it was windows I'd go into dos but I don't know where to start.

Yesterday everything ran smoothly- I even managed to watch BBC iplayer with perfect graphics where the day before it was all broken up- also WE7 music.

But today I've had the slowing up problem.I tried to add last fm through the rhythm music player and the process went on for ever.The browser part of the screen went all grey- the taskbar stayed the normal colour- I presume this indicates that something powerful is happening in the background and it's using all the ram(512 by the way).

Also the sound recorder doesn't seem to be registering any sound .The Level bar is right over at the left hand side with about.5 cm showing.I've adjusted the volume properties to max but it stays the same when I come to record.

 

Thanks again.All help really appreciated.



old nebie comes to linux - znx - 2009-08-05


You should be able to find a GUI editor for the boot loader. However if you are comfortable in the terminal then you can do the following:

 


  • Open terminal

  • Become root by typing:
    Code:
    su -






  • Edit the grub configuration file, you will most likely find nano to be the simplest terminal editor, so:
    Code:
    nano /boot/grub/grub.conf



    You should see something like this in the file:


    Code:
    title Fedora (SomeVersion.fc11)
    root (hdX,Y)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-SomeVersion.fc11 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
    initrd /boot/initrd-SomeVersion.fc11.img






  • Now add the additional bits to the end of the kernel line:
    Code:
    title Fedora (SomeVersion.fc11)
    root (hdX,Y)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-SomeVersion.fc11 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet noapic nolapic
    initrd /boot/initrd-SomeVersion.fc11.img






  • Save the file (Ctrl+o in nano) and exit the editor (Ctrl+x in nano)

  • Reboot!


 

All things being well you will have a system that no longer acts weird. Obviously take care when you are editing grub.conf because it controls your boot sequence.