Can one get to new hardware?

August 15th, 2008 blittan

Just bought myself a new computer. Not a superpowered one, but a decent (compared to my old).

* Abit A-N78HD (with internal GF8200 and HDMI + HD Audio)
* 4GB DDR II
* 320 GB Harddrive (sata)
* DVD/RW (sata)
* AMD Athlon X2 5000+

Now to the not so fun part, installation.

Booted up Ubuntu 8.04 and somewhere in the middle of booting there was CRASH. Searched google and ubuntuforums, came up with a solution. All fine, booted to gnome, installed the computer.
Finished installing all my needed packages and addons, lastly I installed nvidia drivers for the GF. Rebooted and guess what? Yes, dreaded crashes..

More searching, and came up with the solution that the thing I needed to do was compile a new kernel. Did it by the book and everything went fine. Happy with that I proceeded to install nvidia drivers again, but this time they didn’t install. After rebuilding the kernel (with a new set of options) the drivers did install, but even before I installed them, the compter crashed again.

Gave up today (thinking I could bare with windows until Intrepid is released) I installed windows, but that didn’t go smooth either (after a few reboots, failsafe mode and biosupgrade) I am finally enjoying my speedy computer.

Also I did discover kernel.ubuntu.com today, and downloaded a new kernel (which I am gonna give a try tomorrow) because I can’t stand the thought of being without linux :)

Just needed to let some steam of, why can’t hardware just work?

*blittan signing out*

  1. malloc
    August 16th, 2008 at 16:55 | #1

    Were you using drivers from NVIDIA website or envy? I always use NVIDIA drivers and haven’t had a problem. Unless of course the kernel gets upgraded, then you have to make sure to reinstall the NVIDIA drivers.

  2. August 16th, 2008 at 17:26 | #2

    I have tried both, there is a problem with para_virt setting a GPL flag which ofcourse nvidia isn’t.

    Also I compiled the kernel without that flag and got the driver to build successfully, but it just wont install correctly.

    Gonna investigate some more

  3. onesojourner
    August 21st, 2008 at 12:11 | #3

    I hope you get it figured out. I always seem to have hardware issues. I hope you get it figured out. Every one should have ubuntu on their machine.

  4. Tyler
    August 22nd, 2008 at 19:12 | #4

    Seems like hardware should have some flash chip onboard with drivers for windows, mac, and linux, and then upgrading drivers would have an optional chip flashing. that way downloading drivers wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

  5. Good perspective
    November 3rd, 2008 at 03:17 | #5

    Hey guys, I’m glad I found this blog, you have good perspective!

    Say as a tech person could you suggest where to download drivers for my HP 6820s notebook?”

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