A little Help please

I've been running winblows all my life so I don't know much about linux I just installed suse 10.0 64-bit eval and it is awesome I completly love it its easy to bumble your way through and still learn about what your doing anyways I still have some problems that I could use some help with

1. I have a nvidia 6800 card but the system just dosn't look that nice I am using kde and I'm running the resolution at 1024-768 24 bit but everything still looks big

2. When I look at the mem usage everything is being used I did some research and I guess linux use the mem first and then the swap Is this true? also does this affect mem intense apps?

3. I have a pretty good computer it is an amd atholon 3500+ 64 bit on an asus k8v-se deluxe mbo with 1024 of kingston (nothing special) ram with two 80 gig drive in a raid 0 array plus a storage drive with 200 g. No I swear I'm not trying to brag my system isn't the best but I'm still just a little proud of it anyways suse just seems a little sluggish I wonder if I don't have the right drivers installed or if there is something not set up right I haven't tried to run any games on it yet so it might just be my imagination. but if suse is kinda a resorce hog is there a better distro out there or is there something I can do to increase performance?

4. Last one. Is linux in general just bad for gaming? I know most games are made for windoze but I was going to try wine. Should I keep windows just for games and doing everything else on suse or what?

5. sorry one more I have a dvdrw and a dvd-rom if I put a music cd in one drive it plays just fine and thats all good but then if I but any other data cd in the other drive it stops playing the first cd what the heck is that all about

6. seriosly this is the last one I can't play dvds or mpeq or anything in any of the players I found somewhere how to fix it and it seemed easy but know I can't find that article again what do I need to do to get these players I beleive I need the codecs but I'm not sure how to get them
anyways any help would be awesome

Don't have time to ans all your questions just now,

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1. I have a nvidia 6800 card but the system just dosn't look that nice I am using kde and I'm running the resolution at 1024-768 24 bit but everything still looks big
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Right click your desktop > Configure desktop > Display > Size & Orientation Tab
Try out a config that meets your need.


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if suse is kinda a resorce hog is there a better distro out there
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distrowatch.com lists them all + good writeups.

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or is there something I can do to increase performance?
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You bet! Yast > system > system services (runlevel)
Start turnning things off that you will never use. I recommend searching the forum before you start shutting things down or when you reboot, it may not be a happy day.

There are performance monitors in start > utils > monitor
search the forum for command line (cli) performance monitor
and find out exactly what's using your resources 1st. "ps aux" in a terminal is one.

Hope this helps...

It does I will try those things if I have more questions I will post thanks

Originally posted by The_Sh0rty@Jan 5 2006, 09:07 PM
2. When I look at the mem usage everything is being used I did some research and I guess linux use the mem first and then the swap Is this true? also does this affect mem intense apps?

Linux uses as much ram as possible. After that it will overflow to swap. This is the exact opposite from the way windows handles ram. This is done so that porgrams are loaded faster and react faster since they are stored in the RAM.

3. I have a pretty good computer it is an amd atholon 3500+ 64 bit on an asus k8v-se deluxe mbo with 1024 of kingston (nothing special) ram with two 80 gig drive in a raid 0 array plus a storage drive with 200 g. No I swear I'm not trying to brag my system isn't the best but I'm still just a little proud of it anyways suse just seems a little sluggish I wonder if I don't have the right drivers installed or if there is something not set up right I haven't tried to run any games on it yet so it might just be my imagination. but if suse is kinda a resorce hog is there a better distro out there or is there something I can do to increase performance?

What exactly do you mean by sluggish and slow? Gentoo is a thought since it is built to your computers specs but I don't suggest someone new to linux to give it a try. I'd say wait until you have a decent knowledge of the command line.

4. Last one. Is linux in general just bad for gaming? I know most games are made for windoze but I was going to try wine. Should I keep windows just for games and doing everything else on suse or what?

Games made for native linux arefine. Games made for windows and adapted to run on linux is basically the luck of the draw. I'd personally keep a windows partition/computer if gaming is a necessity.

6. seriosly this is the last one I can't play dvds or mpeq or anything in any of the players I found somewhere how to fix it and it seemed easy but know I can't find that article again what do I need to do to get these players I beleive I need the codecs but I'm not sure how to get them
anyways any help would be awesome

[snapback]109588[/snapback]

Is this the one you were talking about?
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/

What I mean by sluggish is it dosent have the same snap that windows does I understand that windows was desined user freindly and linux was desinged for security but there must be some things that I can do to make it respond quick when I open programs and look better I'm kinda a sucker for eye candy

one other thing when ever I play a cd in ammorak it works fine but if I but a cd into a differnt drive it stops playing the first cd is there anyway to fix this

I did all of the things in the gem report but only mplayer will play dvds not kaffiene and I hear kaffine is better any tips on getting it to play dvds?

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only mplayer will play dvds not kaffiene and I hear kaffine is better any tips on getting it to play dvds?
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Kaffiene uses xine as its engine to play DVDs. SuSE, by law, cannot provide code to read encrypted DVDs. Holders of the distro say it's "broken" or "crippled". There are update rpms are available however that "fix" it. However, don't break the law in your country. There are many howtos available should you care to seach the forum. Packman is the source I use for xine replacement rpms. One howto is here: http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/ There are many others...

I go to Yast & search for xine & delete everything that has xine in it. 1st get & install win32codecs & the latest version of libdvdcss or libdvdcss2. Packman has a howto for building libdvdcss. Replace/install whatever you deleted before from packman keeping in mind that suse's xinelib is replaced with packman's libxine.

Make sure DMA is turned on for /dev/dvd or it will be "jumpy".

Put in a DVD & try it; you may have to click around in kaffeine & tell it which device is the source for the video.

If it's not illegal where you are, have fun...