Off to a rough start

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

Hello everyone. I just switched from Windows XP after quite a few years of not using Linux anymore. Last time I ran Linux, it was Red Hat 5. I have tried 3 distributions so far, and I am really disappointed by how unstable they all are. I never had to reboot my Red Hat 5 install unless I was heavily modifying stuff. I literally have 64 times as much RAM as I did then, and a processor that has two cores and runs 50-60 times as fast on each core(my old system was a Cyrix 6x86 150mhz with 32mb ddr-sdram). it doesn't feel that much faster, and I've had to reboot at least once a day since installing it.

Mainly I'm using this as a desktop, and I'd really like to be able to watch Youtube since apparently Netflix won't support Linux. I had a problem with my XP machine having stalling issues on Youtube, downloads, games, Netflix, etc, but I just assumed that was because of Vundo. Now with Linux, all distros I have tried stall out way worse than my XP install. I don't want to go back to Windows, but I am having a lot of problems out of the box. I'm running Linux Mint 9, installed off the latest Live DVD. I'm just not sure where to even start, or what to even ask. Is there a dummies guide for Mint somewhere?

I remember back in the BBS days, there was something called "keepalive", which was a setting you could tweak to stop the old dialup connections from dropping. Is there something like that I can adjust in Mint? Sorry to be such a newb, but it's been 13 years since I've booted Linux....

[richyrich]

The best place to start is with a list of your hardware, and Mint installation, easy as opening a terminal, type inxi -F (enter), then copy/paste the output back here . . .

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

Thanks for the tip!

Here is the output:

Code: Select all

System:    Host ******-desktop Kernel 2.6.32-21-generic i686 (32 bit) Distro Linux Mint 9 Isadora
CPU:       Dual core Intel Pentium Dual E2160 (SMP) cache 1024 KB flags (sse3 nx lm) bmips 7200.16 
           Clock Speeds: (1) 1800.00 MHz (2) 1200.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card nVidia NV45 [GeForce 6800 GTO] tty res: 80x24 Gfx Data: N/A for root user
Audio:     Card nVidia MCP51 High Definition Audio driver HDA Intel
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Version 1.0.21
Network:   Card nVidia MCP51 Ethernet Controller driver forcedeth at port f200 
Disks:     HDD Total Size: 120.0GB (3.8% used) 1: /dev/sda WDC WD1200BB-16C 120.0GB 0C 
Partition: ID:/ size: 106G used: 4.3G (5%) fs: ext4 ID:swap-1 size: 4.92GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 35.0C mobo: 34.0C gpu: 0.0:57C 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 2295 sys-1: 0 sys-2: 2647 
Info:      Processes 158 Uptime 9:01 Memory 573.0/2012.2MB Client Shell inxi 1.3.2 

[richyrich]

Graphics: Card nVidia NV45 [GeForce 6800 GTO] tty res: 80x24 Gfx Data: N/A for root user

This shows your graphics card but resolution/data isn't set/available . . are you running from the live dvd ?

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

I'm running from an install to my hard drive. I'll look through the control settings to see what I can figure out.

nVidia drivers have their own X server control panel, and this seems to work in place of the Mint panels. Would this be a factor?

[richyrich]

Menu -> Control Center -> Hardware Drivers . . does it recommend any Nvidia drivers to activate ?

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

That was actually the first thing I did after install. It says the drivers are up to date

[richyrich]

And it shows that one of the drivers are active ?

Menu -> Terminal - > compiz-check (enter), please post back the results . .

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

Yes, it says version 173 is active.

[Old Ruler]

Reading between the reminiscences You had problems with XP, particularly YouTube, and you've tried 3 Linux distros and found them all unstable, and you have similar problems with Linux Mint. It screams hardware problems to me.

Can you say more about how it "stalls out", why you need to reboot and tell us more about the network problem? Compare the output of 'ifconfig', while the network connection is working, with the output when it's not.

You should probably run a memory tester. You may have a boot option to run memtest86, or it may be available as an option on the install disk. Run it for a good few hours.

Welcome back by the way...

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

I should note that when switching from XP to Linux, I also switched to entirely new hardware. Nothing in this system except the case and the CD/DVD drives are the same.

I ran ifconfig and here's what it says:

Code: Select all

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1a:92:7d:12:16  
          inet addr:192.168.2.3  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::21a:92ff:fe7d:1216/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:873484 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:628000 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:1136488204 (1.1 GB)  TX bytes:83675417 (83.6 MB)
          Interrupt:23 Base address:0xe000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:760 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:760 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:51065 (51.0 KB)  TX bytes:51065 (51.0 KB)

virbr0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 62:5a:a5:fa:be:9f  
          inet addr:192.168.122.1  Bcast:192.168.122.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::605a:a5ff:fefa:be9f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:551 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:139183 (139.1 KB)

I know this connection has problems on the ISP's end of things. All systems attached to it suffer severe drops in connection quality every minute or two, sometimes more often, but with Linux, unlike XP, this problem is so much worse. In XP I just right-clicked on the connection and did "repair" and it would improve for a short while, but never completely. I had a friend bring a laptop over a while back with Linux on it, and that system also suffered worse connection issues than the windows boxes do. I lack the technical lingo to explain this, but it seems like Linux "gives up" on the connection a lot more easily. Is there some way I can make it smoother? Youtube stalls every 10-15 seconds and I have to move the progress bar to get it to start again. Sometimes I've had to log out completely and log back in just to get the browser to start browsing again. It just doesn't want to load anything suddenly and won't improve.

Anyway I will do as you say and run some memory tests ASAP. I have Dell DDR2 in here, and it's relatively conservative timings on the RAM. It's not gaming RAM or anything. I'll do some research if there's a compatibility issue that is known.

[grey1960envoy]

Are you sure it is not in the router/internet connection itself ? I'm no genius but in my humble opinion ,if it acts the same with someone else's laptop I would start checking that .

[bulgrien]

I don't want to go back to Windows, but I am having a lot of problems out of the box.

FWIW: While my out-of-the-box experience with Linux Mint was good, my experience with Mandriva 2010 (One edition) was better.

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

Ah that's so ironic. I'm having the total opposite. So far I really like Mint. I just wish the package manager had a force resume option. It stalls on downloading files and then sits for 5-10 minutes before resuming sometimes. My connection is working, but the package manager just stops trying for a while. Only the first time did it stall so bad I had to restart the OS(I let it try for over 24 hours). All other times it has restarted eventually. A "force resume" option of some kind would be awesome. Is that possible?

[Amish_Fighter_Pilot]

Is there some setting I can change to force the connection to keep trying? I can't load a Youtube page for example, and go browse another tab without having to come back to the song 5-20 times to restart it when it stalls. In fact while I was typing the word "stalls", it stalled again. I know my connection is unstable, but surely other people use unstable Internet with Linux and work around it somehow..... My ISP is not responsive about the problem. I'm not sure it will ever be fixed, but there's not a lot of options here.

[harpomarx]

Hi - hey you might do well to remember that essentially mint is a rebranded ubuntu with a few slight changes. I have found that mostly what works for ubuntu can work for mint so you might want to check the ubuntu forums too. I totally understand what you are saying as I recently switched too but any problems I had initially were caused by my misunderstanding the new ways of doing things. For example you will find that updating your drivers and making sure they are ACTIVATED too !!! that was a biggie for me when i discovered I had to actually activate drivers it made a whole lot of difference. just keep tweaking the system, and one thing I realised is that these days "leaner" doesn't always mean mean "more stable" some times there are things which look like bloat compared to back in the day that actually add stability. I think my first distro also was redhat 5, that would have been back somewhere around 1997 1998 or 1999 somewhere then anyhow. Things have changed and once you get used to this way of working and after a few days of messing around with settings it suddenly becomes very apparent that the problem is in the way you percieve things to be compared to how things actually are. Once you start understanding the developments Linux mint is actually a lot better than any windows system I ever used including windows 7. Just keep on perservering I know you will get to grips with it
Just go back over stuff you swwitched off or changed that may help, another important thing is to try another dns setting
six dns servers provided by the internet authorities top level domain providers are at 4.2.2.1 to 4.2.2.6
I believe these belong to the IANA organisation. you could always use open dns - just try those see if they improve the situation