[olug] Debian?

[Hungate Jim]

I've actually seen 3D running in Linux. You're missing out.
I found out that in Mandrake 8.0 w/ XFree86 4.0.3 that The driver for the
Voodoo4/5 cards has been (incorrectly) statically linked against the Voodoo3
libraries. So I (attempted) upgrading to XFree86 4.1.0 from Mandrakes
"cooker" distro. Anyway, I ended downloading and installing about 20
different packages to try and make sure I had all the libraries I was going
to need and it didn't seem to work. So I tried running XFree86 3.3.6 (I'm
sure it was really a mixture of the messed up packages I had loaded) and for
some strange reason, 3D worked! I finally got see things like TuxRacer,
Chromium, GLtron, etc in all their glory. I even loaded some Loki demos
(Heavy Gear II, Heretic II, & Soldier of Fortune). It was great, everything
ran beautiful with great frame rates, and I thought "Finally, I can get rid
of Windows, I don't need to keep it around for gaming!". Then the next day,
my son was playing, and when something messed up, he shut the computer off.
Of course when I booted the computer back up, it was finding errors, and
fscking and all that fun stuff, and my 3D was history. I've tried repeating
my steps of before with no luck. So I figure the best thing to is load a
distro that actually contains 4.1.0
I've tasted 3D gaming in Linux and I'm hooked!


Jim Hungate 

The box said "Requires Windows95 or better", so I installed Linux 

 


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Lassek [mailto:alassek at techie.com]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 9:10 AM
To: olug at bstc.net
Subject: Re: [olug] Debian?


Until Woody is released, Progeny is the way to go since the packages are a
lot newer, and actually work (I installed my work machine off of
testing--yikes). I wiped Potato off my home machine a while ago and all I
did afterward was change the /etc/apt/sources.list to point to Debian's
offical servers (you're better off doing this because Progeny takes even
longer than Debian to include packages into their APT servers). Now my box
is pretty much indistinguishable from any stable or testing install. Progeny
is nice this way because you can easily install regular Debian packages and
it won't break things. The only real difference between Progeny and Potato
I've found is the install, everything else is pretty much the same. The main
advantage of Progeny is the graphical installer, although the graphical APT
tool they include totally blows. Woody will include a graphical installer,
which is probably why they're taking so long to release it.

As for 3D, it doesn't matter what distro you use--it's gonna suck. Doubly so
considering you have a card made by a company that no longer exists. You may
have better luck than I, though, since I spent three years trying to get my
damn Voodoo3 working and to this date have never seen 3d run under Linux on
my box. Now that I have a GeForce2, maybe it's time to try again. Best of
luck to you there.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hungate Jim <Hungate_Jim at prc.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 12:37:30 -0400 
To: "'olug at bstc.net'" <olug at bstc.net>
Subject: [olug] Debian?


>   OK, I've tried several distributions over the years. Redhat, Suse,
> Slackware, Mandrake, Storm, etc. Anyway, I've kind of settled in to the
> Mandrake thing. They made it easier for my wife to switch. Anyway, on my
> machine, I'm thinking the time has come to move to Debian.
>  Is anyone here running Debian with a Voodoo4/5 video card? Would I need
to
> update to Xfree86 4.1.0 to get the 3D portion to work? Would I be better
of
> going with Progeny? What are the advantages or drawbcaks of Progeny? Any
> suggestions?
>   Thanks,
> 
> Jim Hungate 
> 

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