New hardware, nVidia and Firefox questions

[ozone]

Greetings!
I am new to the board and for the most part Linux. I have just built a dual boot computer in hopes that Ultimate Edition will be my primary OS.

I played with Ultimate Edition a while ago on a really old computer and had all kinds of cool visual effects. My new computer is 10x faster and I can't do any of that. I have seen forum posts and guides online on how to install nVidia drivers, but it is still a mystery to me. It seems like there are a lot of different methods all fraught with caveats or danger for the newb.

The guide here says to use Envy. When I follow the provided path, I don't have Envy. It also says to use the restricted manager method. I don't have that either. My card doesn't appear in the list that tells which driver to use either.

I was thinking about following the guide here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install ... -lynx.html

Is that a good idea?

Here are my stats:

Gigabyte UD3P 1155 motherboard
Intel i7 2600K processor
nVidia Geforce GTX 570 superclocked EVGA video card
2 x Crucial M4 256GB SSD's (one for Windows, one for Linux)
1 x 150 GB raptor HDD
1 x 300 GB velocitraptor HDD
X-Fi Titanium Fatality Sound Blaster

I'm using Ultimate Edition 2.6.1

Regarding Firefox: two things. One, it seems to be slow. When I boot into Windows I surf around at normal speed. When I boot into Linux, it's slow boat to China.

In windows I use Firefox 4. Ultimate Edition came with 3.6. I thought Firefox was native to Linux, but when I go to Ubuntu Software Center to update, it isn't listed. Guides I have found, seem to be old and show how to use it as a beta or in addition to the 3.6 install.

I'm slowly moving my old data around and getting used to new ways of doing things, but I could use a little help. I love open source and I've been looking forward to migrating to Linux as my primary for a long time.

Oh one more question. I did get some automatic updates and, stupid question, but on the Ultimate Edition home page the author described how happy he was with 2.6.1, which is why I chose it, but if I allow these automatic upgrades will it actually upgrade Ubuntu and "break" the Ultimate Edition "package" that is so nice? I started to look at what was included, but there were hundreds of items and some of them said they were third party and could harm my system. Aaaaaaa!

to self: "Don't Panic. Breathe."

Ok, I'm back.

I have been reading through the forums and I will continue to do so, but after a while I start suffering from forum fatigue and have to step back for a while.

So thanks for the help, in advance.

[billhedrick]

I am running 2.6.1 with Firefox 4, you can upgrade it pretty safely.

But you might try 2.9, it's a newer Kernal and might play nicer with your hardware. Have you tried Ubuntu 11.04? How does that work for you (all these can be booted off live disks, so you can try them safely. Ultimate Edition 3.0 is just around the corner, and is 11.04 based, with the newest Kernal, so if you can wait a little, you will be pleased!

[ozone]

Thanks for the info. I can wait for the next one, but is 3.0 a long term support edition. I don' t like continuously upgrading.

Also, I was actually asking HOW to get Firefox 4. I download it from the website. Do I just double click the shell file?

[billhedrick]

I used this tutorial on my 2.6.1 install
http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-I ... 3595.shtml

I dig using a LTS install, good luck! But still allow kernal upgrades, you can let it upgrade, just don't click on the offered 11.04 upgrade.

[ozone]

Will that be offered separately because, like I said, there were hundreds of items offered? I sure don't want to have to look at every one of them. Some of them I don't even understand anyway.

And thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

[billhedrick]

yea, if the 11.04 upgrade is offered, it's a separate deal, it shows up at the top of the upgrade window, you have to pick it, it won't install automatically

[ozone]

Awesome. Great. Thanks again.

[ozone]

When I hit update, it seriously broke my internet connection. The icon at the top said that I was disconnected. Did many searches on many forums and nothing worked. I finally reloaded Linux, which broke Grub. I researched that and was able to fix it, but I still couldn't load Windows. So more searching and I fixed the bootloader in Windows and got back to where I started. Now I'm afraid to update.

Plus Firefox is seriously slow. I read someplace to unplug the computer and hold down the power button for a while to discharge, then wait for about 10 minutes. When I did this, lots of things got faster. Unfortunately, they slowed down again on pretty much the next boot. Sometimes Firefox in Linux just doesn't want to load pages, but if I get out and go into Windows, there's no problem.

Any suggestions? FF is practically unusable currently.

[pclinuxguru]

Some times, updates could remove support for a hardware that is walking the line for EOL. Or could have just been left out unintentional.

Options are

Lock Linux firmware and kernel versions down via synaptic so they will not update.

Or try another kernel set.

Or try a older or newer release.

[ozone]

Thanks. I will try that.

I have an SSD, so reducing writes is always a good thing, too!