Re: [Staffslug] July Meeting 2010 - 5th July

Hi, Here are some possible subjects for the next and subsequent meeting(s). I am relatively new in the Linux camp but I have installed and played around with loads of different distros. In every case, however, I consistently get one or two hw devices that simply wont work. Suse and Ubuntu seem to be the best whereby Ubuntu succeeds even more often than Suse. On the other hand I like Suse better than Ubuntu. I have read a lot of online how tos but most of the time I don't understand the terminology because most of these documents assume that the reader already knows a lot of this stuff. Worst of all, most of the time the instructions will contain references to files/utilities/locations which do not exist on my current system as every distro is different. But even if I get a fix from the Suse website for a Suse problem, more often than not the fix wont work. Something is almost always missing despite the fact that I follow the instructions to the letter. So, I (and maybe a few others) could really do with some guidance on how to: 1) trouble shoot hardware issues how to establish if a device has been detected how to confirm that a driver has been installed how to get the drivers version/type etc. AND how to change/install a different one. This should include compiling drivers from source code. 2) Compiling Source Code. I constantly get errors of something missing. How to read/interpret the compiler log and find the missing modules etc. 3) Fixing X-Windows problems such as when it wont start due to an incorrect resolution setting, refresh rates etc. That is enough for now but I can come up with loads more if need be :-) Regards, Walt