Topic: linux

[beo]

never played with linux, but i'm thinking about giving it a go now. i want something that's fast to power up, with low overheads and a functional user interface. any suggestions?

[scottws]

Try out Xubuntu.  I haven't tried it, so I don't know how quick it is to boot.  It uses XFCE in lieu of KDE or GNOME, so the desktop subsystem is less resource intensive.

[idolminds]

I use regular Ubuntu on my netbook, (ok, its a netbook version but basically the same thing other than interface and some specific drivers). Its pretty simple. Cant really make and judgements on boot speed or anything since my netbook is kind of low end.

[Cools!]

Ubuntu. I've been running it on my home server for years without problems. Has a decent desktop UI to get you started. You'll have to read-up a bit on how to "properly" install Linux, but it's gotten pretty straightforward by now.

[scottws]

Kubuntu 10.04 (LTS) just came out yesterday.  I'm going to load it up on my PC today or tomorrow.  This will help me find out if this major USB problem I'm having is just Windows 7 or my motherboard going bad.

[scottws]

The USB problem persists in Linux.  Looks like I need a new motherboard. 

[Cobra951]

There's always:
 

[scottws]

You know what?  I have one of those in my old computer.  I totally forgot about it.  I'll give it a shot.

[scottws]

I put in the USB card last night.  I was able to actually print again, so that's a relief.  I didn't get a chance to test out my backup to external USB drive, because if it flakes out I don't want it to wipe out the volume that's on there like it has done before.  I currently have backups of my parents' computer on there and I just reformatted Windows yesterday and haven't restored anything yet, so losing that stuff would be very bad.

My card and the card in Cobra's picture both have an internal USB connection.  What is this for?  I have never seen an internal device that uses a standard USB connector.  I was hoping my card would have pins like my motherboard does so I could plug in the top panel's USB ports, but alas it doesn't.  Just the standard external port type.

I need to get an internal USB card with a PCIe 1x connection.  My PCI card is a PCI card first of all, plus it only has four ports.  I am using all of those slots.  I basically lost eight that were through my motherboard (six in back and two on top).  I have an external powered USB hub, but it has only one slot open on that.  It is stackable though... maybe I'll see if I can get another.

[Cobra951]

Heh.  Yeah, that's the ubiquitous NEC chipset, I think.  It's supposedly the better one floating out there.  Since I had problems with my firewire port, I'm now using 3 of the outside USB ports (on one of those cards) for external drives.  If I add one more semi-permanent USB gadget, I'm going to look into feeding one of the USB cords into the box (and plug it into the card's inner port).  Hmm, maybe the iPod cable could go there.  That would leave an outer port open all the time for memory sticks or whatever.

[scottws]

Yeah I think mine is the same as the one above.  4-port Belkin PCI with NEC chipset.  You can barely make out the NEC logo on the chip, but the Belkin logo is obvious.

I got mine back when I had my old PC and got a webcam.  My old PC had a VIA chipset and apparently VIA doesn't follow the USB specifications and underpowers their USB ports, or at least did back then, which in turn causes devices that rely on 500mA like webcams to act flaky or fail to work at all.

All the research I did led me to the conclusion that only the Intel and NEC USB chipsets were worth a damn and that led me to the Belkin card.  The Intel USB chipsets could only be had with an Intel-based motherboard and at the time AMD was king (hence the VIA based board).

This was years ago and today's products could be better or worse.  Most of the add-on USB cards at the time were VIA based and those that were - probably not coincidentally - were very inexpensive compared to the NEC based counterparts.

Since then I've pledged to only get Intel-based motherboards.  They seem to be of the highest overall quality anyway.

[scottws]

Yep the USB card seems to have solved my issue.  Sweet, I don't have to buy a new motherboard and then go through the headache of installing it.

[Cobra951]

I was fairly confident that it would solve a hardware issue.  It solved my issue with my 1.x USB ports (terminal sloooownesssss) completely.  Actually, I still use those for gamepads and communication between the UPS and the PC.  Cool!

Edit:  Actually, this is exactly what I have.  The other picture I pulled from a quick online search.  Same chipset and layout.  I learned from my research to stay away from the VIA alternatives.

[scottws]

Yeah, the USB cards are a great solution to upgrade to the next revision of the specification.  When I was doing consulting, I had a customer that was backing up... I don't remember how many GB on a server nightly to a USB hard drive.  The backup was taking something like 18 hours, which was ridiculous for the amount of data.

I suggested a USB 2.0 card and they leaped once they learned it was like a $20 upgrade.  I put in a cheap Rosewill USB 2.0 card (NEC-based) and connected the drive to it and the backup started finishing in just over an hour.  They were pretty happy with the improvement.

USB 3.0 is out now, so I might be doing this again soon on my PC.  Up to 5 GB/s?  That's a huge improvement over USB 2.0 and is even faster than eSATA using a SATAII controller.

[Cobra951]

Wow.  Hard-drive mechanical access will be a worse bottleneck than that.  But it won't do much good until new devices start using it.

[scottws]

Yeah I was reading the reviews of some USB 3.0 PCIx cards and they are getting less than 100 MB/s.