Im am writing this to relieve excessive stress, and to see if anybody can pick out major mistakes i made during my conversion. It will be long, but i encourage you to read it. I want you to give me help for when i give the conversion a second try.


: The Start :

I started out with windows xp. I have been using windows for many years, and i haven't realaized that jsut now, thers a count down on how many days i continue using it, before i have to repurchase it. I also realized that that day was in 22 days. I frieked, but knowing previously about linux, from making sad attempts to convert to linux years ago, i tried looking at the latest linux fads. I looked into fedora, mandrake, debian, and a few others. I having alot of compyter techinichle skill, deciding i would try out debian, seeing as it had the All-In-One feal to it. I had very limited internet bandwqidth, and decided i should buy it. I got debian sarge on dvd shipped to me on septemeber 3. It came in the mail about 5 days later. I quickly rushed to my computer, and installed it. Installing was simple. A few clicks, and i was done. having tried debian before, i remembered alot abou the apt-get system. Soon, i had kde up and running, except for one problem, my mouse wasn't working coreectly. It seemed to me that it had something to do with my scroll mouse. after many hours of fustration, and amny reinstalls, i finaly figured out that i had selected thw rong driver. that was simple. but this time isntead of installing kde, i installed gnome. liked its look and feal.

: Gnome Up and running fully :
So i got excited, i know knew how to get from a dvd, to having gnome up and running fully. From there, i went on to install all sorts of wonderous software i found on my cd. But i also wanted to install my favorite linux por of a windows game. I downloaded it, and installed. I took one look at it, and realized i might need drivers for it. I did a little resarch, and i opped up with the name iopen gl. Then, i continuied, to find that ati had linux drivers. So i went on to the ati website, and downloaded there rpm package of drivers. I did a little chatting, and found out i could convert it to debian pakcage using alien. I did that, and installed it. At first, the install had to overwrite the previous opengl drivers(MESA), 5 chatlines down the road, and i had it installed, and it gave me no errors. Sop i tried the game again. No such luck. A little research, and i found out i had to swicth the Xfree86 config to run the driver. I did that. xfree worked, but the game still din't. I was ferious, this was my favorite game, and uit just ahpooned to be thje only windows game i played that had a linux port. I was determined to get it to work.

: Second try :
By the way, the game i was trying to run is Wolfenstine enemy Territory. I wanted to reinstall debian oncew again, but first i realized that i didn;t want to redownload my enemy territory. I tried using a knoppix cd i burned to backlup large files that i downloaeeded, like enemy terriroty. no such luck. I found out that i cant connect to my windows netowork on knoppix, i cant write to ntfsa partition in knoopix, i couldnt do squat that people download knoppix for, on knoppix. I gave up, and resintalled debian without my enemy terrirory file. This time i , i downloaded ati's drivers, installed them ,and i run a utility to configure xfree for the dirvers, despp[ite a warning sign from another website. the firsr time, i didn;t think i went watched very carefully at it, and at the end, xfree stpooped working. So, i did't know how to reconfig xfree. I ended up reinstalling debian once again. I wanted to start fersh, and see if that would make a diffreence, i downloaded enemy territory, and installed it, and i watched to see if the orgiinal xfree drivers would work. No such luck. So i installed flgrx (the drivers) and went into detail about their installation instreuctions, and i found out that the recompile ther kernal just for these drivers. I followed through to make sure this took place, i even updated my kernel to one i had the kernel source of. I was atrting tyo beocme more expereinced with linux. the new kernel worked fine, so i sintalled fglrx apckages. Then i went to test the game again. It dind't work. i found out that there was small utility to find out if the active drivers were ati ones. So i ran it. I found out, even after being supposeldy dleted,m the mesa drivers were still the acvtive opengl drivers.

: DELETE MESA :
I went into alot of work,t rying to delete mesa. The next part is kind of blurry, but my memory shows me i did alot of deleteing and reinstalling of packages, all of them. I had deleted and renistalled more packages than your aversage debian installer does when installing a full system. This eventually wound me up to have no drivers for open gl, when i did the test. it said complete blanks, I was confused. Despite my previous experience and warnings, i thought i might try running ati's config again, and going through it very carefully this time. It replaced it, and it didn't work. It restarted that x window system, and wound up with the same aror as abefore, but not about to give up, i deceded i might find a back up in the diorectory. I had to laern the command prompt to do this, because i had tried linux again, and found out it woudln't let me modified root owned files. so, witht the console, i dareling exploreed differwent things, changing ati's config's name to DELETEME, and renaming the backup file t the normal. i tried runnign x again, same pronblem. I was getting real confused, angry stressed, and sad at the same time. I eventual;ly learned how to use ed, and found out that ati had written the same file to both the normal config, and the "backup". I was determined not to renistall debian. I soon learned that the pronblem could be sovled by running xfree's config again, something i thought i couldn't do. I did that, and all turned out great. I had to modify the ati verison of the copnfig to "Deleteme2" and once again gnome was back and running.

: My second achievement :
I finaly felt happy and proud again. I had soplved a problem that myself, 3 days ago, would never have knew how to solve. I went back ito linux, ran the etsts again, it still turned up with no drivers. I did some more reinstalls, but no deleteing, trying to get something to turn up into that space. I was starting to slow down, get tired. I was trying to get anything, mesa, ati, or some other open gl syustem to apear. but it trurned up negative everytime.

: Giving up on games :
The sadest part of the story. I finaly decided i couldn't run the games, and i had to keep windows. This is no recently compared to wheen i wrote this article. I deleting the lats of the mesa and ati packages, which automaticaly deleted all games requireing them. I decided that i would have to buy another windows copy, something cheap, and use linux for a main system. So i started working. i went into mozzilla. This is wherw another problem arose. I wanted to watch streaming video. I told me i had to get somesort of plugin, mplayer2. a thousand clicks and 2 thousand letters later, i had source tarball package on my desktop. I knew that i would have to learn to compile sources sometime, it might as well be know. So, i followed intrustions, and landed on s snag right away. It told me that my Compiler available couldnt compile programs. I went into little research about this, i tried renistalling all the compilers, nothinging worked. I had to give up on streaming video too. But still i have not given up on linux. I then decided should completely renistall my sytekm, new windows, new debian, based on that fact that windows would be internet, games and anything to do with sound, because sound never seemed to work under linux, but i never wnet into detail trying to make ti work. And that linux would tand for everything else.

: Here I Am :
Just in case, i wanted to backup my enemy territory for linux. I knew i couldn't do it with knoppix in anyway. So with my new linux experience, i tired resizing my partitions with one that i could store my files on, anf that wouldn't get deleted when i rensitntalled my computer. That eneded in disaster, com,pletely runing my linux system. It woudlnt read from the hardrive anymore, so i went into windows for the first time in 3 days. I was about to give up on linux. I thought to mself, Mayble Later, or maybe reactos (google it, i cant post urls). But, in a last attempt at hope, i found a program capable of copying from ext3 partiotns from windows. This gave me hope, and i succefully backed up wolfenstine enemy terrirory. That was about 20 minutes before making this post.

Its now down to five days before windows clocks out, and im going to give linux another shot. Im almost out of hope, so i came onto this site, and posted it hear. I wanted to see if others could fix my problems, and give me enoguh hope for me to actually pick up the cd and reinstall linux.

Please respond, even if its unrelated, to chear me up.

Windoze is for playing, as in games, virus, worms, trojans.

Linux is for security, work, not playing.

Stick with Windoze. And if you have 5 days left because you're
using a copy CD - buy it. That's illegal. Whether you agree with
the law, or Micro$loth's business practices, or not.

No offense intended, but your English is horrible. You should at
least use the Spell Check button. You don't need 5 posts for that.

my copy of windows is legitimate, i did buy it, its just that somebody stole my windows key, and the Microsoft people say that unless i can prove it, I'm screwed. And i cant prove it. who could?

the copy i boguht was only 30 $ oem, along with a ram upgrade, so i cant complain too kuch, im over that now.

Oh, and no offense taken about my English, i also did't notice that there was a spell-check button.

Every migration has its own terror stories. I tried 3 diff distros before sticking to suse. Started in 2001, to the present. Installed suse for the first time in september 2003, one year now.

In my first try I was too green for linux, completely lost, didn't know anything. The system hanged for a few times and I couldn't fsck it, so, got pissed and removed it. The second lasted for a few months, I could actually share my internet connection (most important issue) and stuff. But openoffice wasn't an option at that time, and I had to do lots of word processing, returned to win. The third try I can't recall well what exactly happened, it lasted for months also, but I needed harddrive space, and removed linux.

Even now, in suse, there are things that just now I am figuring out: temperature sensors from my motherboard I could set two weeks ago.
I Still can't use my remote control from tv card (crap lirc stuff, can't set it).

The problem is: when you switch, you better switch fully. If someone switches to keep using win stuff, its a problem. If you need win programs, run into wine problems. Win network, samba problems. Windows filesystem, drivers problems.

Another thing I have learned: try to solve one problem at a time. Have a clean fresh system which you can play and learn. And go slow, make sure you get what's going on. If you succeed just by trial-and-error, maybe in the future if you need to do the same thing you won't remember anything.

Last thing: Debian is a great system. But maybe you want to start using a rpm based linux (mandrake-redhat-suse and so...).

Keep the faith. Good luck.

That guy just gave you some good advice.
If you really want to use Linux, read this document ->
http://tille.soti.org/training/tldp/ and also just forget
about Windoze eXperiment. It's a piece of junk. If
you will force yourself to use Linux, and just work on
one app at a time, you will soon find that you're really
starting to learn.


btw...

Welcome to LQ!

that message that you are getting about windows activation will not require you to pay any more money. microsoft only requires that you register windows (register does not mean purchasing a subscription or anything like that) so that they can reduce piracy (everyone that installs windows has to tell microsoft that it is installed with a valid cd key now). just click on the popup box that says you need to activate windows, follow the steps, fill in your info, and you should be fine. once you follow those steps, windows will be valid on your system indefinately (unless you change enough hardware that windows thinks that it is now on anoter computer).

i highly reccomend GNU/Linux, but you shouldn't feel forced to switch because of an ill-worded microsoft annoyance.

now, on the other hand, it is very possible to get games up and running. you want to check out cedega (www.transgaming.com) for windows games. but there are a lot of native games like ET, wolfenstein, quake, unreal tournament, etc.

you have a difficult task; however, because you chose to purchase an ati video card. ati has not yet released easy-to-install drivers for linux. you have to compile the driver from source. however, one Debian user has made a script that can be used to install the ati driver (http://kanotix.com/files/). get the "install-radeon-debian.sh" script. open a shell, type

this will put your system into a text console single-user mode. log in as "root" go to the directory where you downloaded the script and type

this will install the script and return your system to graphical multi-user mode. i have not used this script because i have a well-supported nvidia video card, so i don't know how well it will work.

good luck. using GNU/Linux takes some patience, but it is well worth it

zero thanks for the suggestion, but i tried activating windows, my windows key was stolen and used by somebody else. I think i know who, but i cant rpove it, and microsoft, although fealing sorry for me, will not give me another key unless i prove it was stolen.

Hey, genix, this is my practical advice to you:

- Keep win for now. Dualboot it. Prefer fat32 to ntfs.
- Have a fresh copy of a modern rpm based linux. Install it alongside.
- Keep using windows whenever you need, but build a list of all your computing needs and, one by one, try to move them to linux. Prefer linux native solutions, instead of wine/vmware stuff.
- Hang on forums and read docs. People's experiences are a great advice.

When you least expect, you are doing everthing in linux. Then, you can remove win.

After all that, if you wish, you can try and install Debian.

sorry, i rethought my previous response, and changed my post quite significantly. please check it out.

as for activating windows, there are ways around it. in your case (since your key was stolen), i think it may be reasonable use subversive methods to circumvent product activation.

i disagree with bruno. debian is easy enough to get started with nowadays (sarge and debian-installer have made this distro a lot more user-friendly). stick with debian and post in the debian forum. there are a lot of helpful peeps there.

oh, and just a suggestion: try to limit your posts to a single question with as much detail about the problem as possible, so it's easier for us to figure out what you need help with.

I didnt want to make my post too long, but another reason im switching to linux is because my windows is screwed up, and if you have read my other psots, its on a timer, i cant afford to buy a new windows cd key, and i cant prove mine was stolen. I could probably do what microsoft hates, and backup my registry, and keep renisntalling windowz, then replace my registry, desktop, and stuff on everynew dcopy on windoz, which would constantly reset my cd key to 30, but that would over write grub or lilo.

there are simpler methods to cicrcumvent WPA.

I noticed. See, one big problem with me, and i think might be contributing to my probles, is that my video card is a media center one, the All In Wonder card with the radeon 9000 graghics engine built in. I dont know if it makes a difference on how it communicates with the card if i try to ignore that its a media center, and use drivers just fore the radeopn 9000 part of it.

Did your friend steal it before or after you installed? If after, you should be able to find it in the registry. If before, then I am sorry to say that you are stuffed - no one here should be discussing "other" ways to get it as that's against the rules and we at LQ do not condone that sort of thing. Not much of a friend was he?

From all accounts here, ATI drivers suck big time, but if you look on the hardware section of the Linux Tutorials (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/answers.php) there are a few tutorials there.

i'm just saying there are ways to get around it. not how to get around it. sorry.

Thanks to all of you, i think im going to try to install debian ocne again, right now. im going to back up importnat windowz files, and delet windows along wihg debian, but leaving enough space to reninstall it. Il have to think up of some way to reload grub to the master boot record, though, and have to boot both windowz and linux. Thanks to yah all, but dont forget to continue psoting if u have more solutions.

Especail thanks to bruno Boys and zero79

Your names will be in my book, at the back.