Switching to linux

[md]

Ok... so I'm not going to go all the way because I do so enjoy BF:1942 and BF:V, but I'm going to try and go back to using linux for my everyday stuff

So here are my problems:
Picasa2 - use it lots, anyone know of a good replacement?
ATI remote - I think I can figure this one out; tvtime looks to have a decent guide
Outlook - I tried evolution and it worked ok... anyone know of anything else that's similar?
MSN - normally Iuse gaim, so no problem there; but webcams... I need to be able to use those
MSVC++ (2003) - yeah, I know that there are lots of other tools, but I really like the integrated debugger, something that I've not been able to find on linux; any ideas?

And last but not least... anyone have a good way of getting dual monitors w/ hardware acceleration at least one of them? Either using both outputs of the ATI card, or the ATI card and a second card... if I can't have my dual monitors and have hardware on at least one of them... no linux

[edit] oh, writing to ntfs would be nice too; but as the "official" drivers only half support it... is there a not-quite-so free way of doing it, or even a hack to allow you to?

[Notoroge]

• Picasa -- No idea. You could try running it on Cedega (And all your games while you're at it. There's no reason why they shouldn't work).
  
• ATI Remote -- Official drivers should support all that fancy stuff
  
• Outlook -- Evolution is pretty much the exact same thing. There's also Kmail; don't like it as much though.
  
• MSN -- You could try aMSN too. If you have the drivers for your Webcam, there should be no problems.
  
• MVC++ -- Qt?

And as for the dual-head setup, I got my 9200 running with full hardware support. I get about 3000FPS on it, which is good. I also have a Radeon 7000 PCI card hooked up as well. That one has no official drivers, but the Open-Source ones let me out-put video to the TV on it, which is all I use it for so I'm good there.

I think you need anything higher than a 8500+ card to have official ATI Driver support.

And for NTFS, no dice. Either reinstall Windows as FAT32, or you can only have read access to the NTFS. Writing is way too *experimental* thus far. Maybe in the near future.

Update: Why not use Mozilla Thunderbird instead of Outlook? Rofl, don't know why I didn't think about that before.

[md]

I use msvc++ only for the IDE... not the graphics stuff; what little graphics I do is usually with DirectX (well... directdraw...), however methinks I'm going to start learning some OpenGL. As for thunderbird; while firefox is awesome, thunderbird just sucks.

Care to give me a guide as to how you got dual monitors working? I've tried many a time and I could never get it to work properly; and by properly I mean at 1280x1024 on each monitor...

[betaflye]

Seriously DON'T WRITE TO NTFS FILESYTEMS WITH LINUX!!!! It's possible to do with a hack/work around, but it cannot change the length of NTFS files and you're likely to mess up NTFS if you do so. Reading NTFS is fine, but don't attempt to write to it, you will likely destroy your NTFS filesystem.

See the FAQ:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html

[Notoroge]

I think we got that point accross already, betaflye.
Cornflake, the OS detected and installed the drivers for my 7000 right out of the box. Then I just setup the ATI drvers for the 9200, and setup the xorg-config file to run two congruent displays.

[md]

I know that the official drivers can only change the file... anyways I can live without writing to ntfs.

I also really like WMP because of it's media library, anything similar for linux?

I'm thinking I'll probably move most of my files over and as I free up space on the windows partition expand the linux partition; that or I'll send most of it over to my server and put hte rest on cds and just start from scratch

[md]

Notoroge wrote:

I think we got that point accross already, betaflye.
Cornflake, the OS detected and installed the drivers for my 7000 right out of the box. Then I just setup the ATI drvers for the 9200, and setup the xorg-config file to run two congruent displays.

What are you using? I really like gentoo so that's what I'll be using... and there really isn't much automatic stuff there... Ah well; back to ye olde google

[Notoroge]

XMMS for audio, and Mplayer for video. It has the most massive codec library I've *ever* seen. If Mplayer (with all the codec packs installed) can't play it, you've got one currupted file.

Ubuntu Linux.

Update: Media Library? Is that anything like organizing files in iTunes? I remember there was something like that. I think Totem does that kind of stuff. Don't recall though.

[[Gandalf]]

Quote:

Outlook - I tried evolution and it worked ok... anyone know of anything else that's similar?

Quote:

As for thunderbird; while firefox is awesome, thunderbird just sucks.

Anything at all is better than Outlook . Just use plain old (not really) Mozilla Mail, its great.

Notoroge, is the 9200 a lot better than the 7000? I have an old 7000 and I know someone who is buying a laptop with a 9200, just wanted to see the differences.

[md]

9200 is WAY better then the 7000; I've used both a 7000 and a 9000 (which is < 9200) and the 7000 is a joke card; good as a secondary pci card maybe, but thats about it.

As for the rest... I'm gonna have to stick with windows for a short while (simply because I don't have the time for an install) but I'll check it all out and see what I can get

[1of42]

Cornflake wrote:

9200 is WAY better then the 7000; I've used both a 7000 and a 9000 (which is < 9200) and the 7000 is a joke card; good as a secondary pci card maybe, but thats about it.

I would have to say the 9200 is only good as a backup card as well... I wouldn't be caught dead with todays gaming scene running a rig with anything lower than a 9600 SE.

[Notoroge]

Really? I play Doom3 quite enjoyably on the 9200. And that game is, arguably, one of the most graphic intensive games there is. Games like CS: Source are a joke to run on this card. For big games like that, it's all about RAM and processing power. You don't really need a massive card. A 9200 would do.
Update: But then again, if you're going to be using Linux. You're probably not a big gamer anyways.

[1of42]

Notoroge wrote:

Really? I play Doom3 quite enjoyably on the 9200. And that game is, arguably, one of the most graphic intensive games there is. Games like CS: Source are a joke to run on this card. For big games like that, it's all about RAM and processing power. You don't really need a massive card. A 9200 would do.
Update: But then again, if you're going to be using Linux. You're probably not a big gamer anyways.

Well, I suppose it could be put this way: For people who like to have their graphics on medium-high settings, a 9200 would not even be under consideration. Obviuosly, you can make most games run on anything if you turn the settings down enough - I saw a guy who got Far Cry working on a 7000 IGP.

And yeah, Linux, generally != gaming. Part of the reason I don't use it (much).

[Notoroge]

Who said anything about low quality settings? I run everything on max. I have 2GBs of RAM and 3GHz AMD 64. I get no bad performance.

[[Gandalf]]

1of42 wrote:

Obviuosly, you can make most games run on anything if you turn the settings down enough - I saw a guy who got Far Cry working on a 7000 IGP.

And yeah, Linux, generally != gaming. Part of the reason I don't use it (much).

Well, I tried running FarCry on my 7000 and it didn't run at all. Lowest settings and everything.

Well, the game I have in mind is only semi-requiring AND it runs well on linux .

Notoroge, I think you exagerrated just a bit there. Doom 3 would not run really well on a 9200, no matter what CPU/Ram you had. I ran it on lowest imaginable settings on my 7000 - the menu was at around 4fps. This was on a p4 2.2Ghz 512RAM.