The Linux Thread!

[Robotengineer]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, what is the best distro to get if I am getting to be able to take full advantage of my hardware?

[steve_v]

That's a question with at least 283 answers, define "full advantage"

[Robotengineer]

That's a question with at least 283 answers, define "full advantage"

Just something basic, 64bit and with drivers for my hardware that are easy to get. I have 16GB of ram, and it feels like it's going to waste. I've tried Ubuntu, but I didn't really like the interface and the fact that I had to reconnect my bluetooth mouse every time I switched back to OS X, and it stopped working after I tried to install the correct Nvidia drivers.

[unseeingwhale]

Try xubuntu. It's an Ubuntu back end with a lightweight and very usable Windows manager. I'm running 14.04.1 and it's amazing. I also have 16GB of ram and an Nvidia video card.

[Kaa253]

Thanks Addle. Confirmed in 0.90 I require to use the binary patch to run anything lightly modded and above. Without it I get an out of memory error when KSP tries to load past ~4Gb.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92231-The-Linux-Thread?p=1608655&viewfull=1#post1608655

Try xubuntu. It's an Ubuntu back end with a lightweight and very usable Windows manager. I'm running 14.04.1 and it's amazing. I also have 16GB of ram and an Nvidia video card.

I also highly recommend xubuntu it is the fastest version of ubuntu. Or, for another desktop experience try the K for Kerbalized version Kubuntu

[steve_v]

Try xubuntu. It's an Ubuntu back end with a lightweight and very usable Windows manager.

Not a bad suggestion. I've never much liked Ubuntu myself, but if you want 'simple' and 'easy' it's probably either that or Mint. The biggest impact is going to be the desktop UI rather than what's under the hood anyway.

Have a play with the various Debian/Ubuntu/Mint live discs and work out which desktop environment you like best. I prefer a slightly stripped down KDE, but it's personal preference.

Your RAM never "goes to waste", what's not in use by the OS or apps becomes disk cache & buffers, speeding up disk access

Edited December 20, 2014 by steve_v

[gonzo28]

I'm running on linux mint and I have the steam version (0.90).

I have problems playing properly KSP. A few days ago when I updated to 0.9 KSP ran very well. But now I have the same problem like before. Wenn I want to turn the camera with right click in construction mode, the camera turns too fast around. With one little move it turns around twice the rocket. The performance is bad as well. I can not reproduce why it worked directly after the update.

[sal_vager]

Isn't Mint just a remake of Ubuntu but with the Mate or Cinnamon desktop? I think Mint is also available with xfce so it's probably in the repos for it.

Mate is just as light on resources as xfce as well I think.

[steve_v]

Isn't Mint just a remake of Ubuntu but with the Mate or Cinnamon desktop?

Mate is just as light on resources as xfce as well I think.

1. Pretty much, mostly ubuntu repo compatible.

2. Almost, MATE ~= GNOME 2

[Robotengineer]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check these out and hopefully one of them will work.

[Nmariotti]

I don't know if you saw my last message. So my GPU is an AMD Radeon HD 5800 with 1Gb of RAM.

I also tried to install fglrx, but I didn't notice any change.

[sal_vager]

An AMD 5800 is a little old now, that may be why it's slow for you, I know when I use the AMD R7 that's built into my APU it's significantly slower than with my Nvidia GTX650 which is hardly the best card out there.

It's still weird that it is reporting only 256 megs of RAM though.

[Nmariotti]

Ok, thank you. So the best option would be to buy a modern GPU that is supported by non-proprietary drivers I think?

[sal_vager]

You have enough RAM and your i7 cpu should be plenty strong enough, I think it really is the graphics card holding you back at this point, for instance AMD dropped support for their HD4000 cards on Linux and yours is just one above that, so it's not as quick as the newer hardware.

Plus, AMD drivers on Linux suck more than a warehouse full of vacuum cleaners.

But it's worth making sure by trying the driver from the AMD site rather than the ones in the repos though, just in case it's working.

[Latori]

Guys, Linux is the best option to run KSP yet?

[steve_v]

The best option if you want to run many mods with no recompiling... for now.

Then it's a race: better OpenGL performance vs. stable Windows x64

[Aristarchus]

Hi All,

I am having trouble with the planet textures on Kerbin and the Mun (Minmus is fine and I haven't gone interplanetary yet). Basically they have become giant disco balls, giving me a massive headache when I play, though that hasn't stopped me. I suspect the problem is my $30 graphics card, but I wanted to throw it out to the illustrious KSP community to confirm that.

Here are a few screenshots of what I am talking about.

http://imgur.com/a/ONsMH

I am running a steam install of the game, and here are my computer's specs.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
memory         64KiB BIOS
processor      Pentium(R) Dual-Core  CPU      E5300  @ 2.60GHz
memory         64KiB L1 cache
memory         2MiB L2 cache
memory         6GiB System Memory
display           GT218 [GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 3]
storage          82801 SATA Controller [RAID mode]
disk              500GB ST3500418AS

Thanks in advance for your help,

Joe

Edited December 20, 2014 by Aristarchus
Screenshots not showing, added link

[Nmariotti]

You have enough RAM and your i7 cpu should be plenty strong enough, I think it really is the graphics card holding you back at this point, for instance AMD dropped support for their HD4000 cards on Linux and yours is just one above that, so it's not as quick as the newer hardware.

Plus, AMD drivers on Linux suck more than a warehouse full of vacuum cleaners.

But it's worth making sure by trying the driver from the AMD site rather than the ones in the repos though, just in case it's working.

Thanks again for the much appreciated help. I also liked the warehouse comparison

[JackDraak]

CPU: AMD64

GPU: Radeon HD 4xxx

O.S.: Ubuntu 14.10 LTS

STATUS: Basically, this worked "out of the box". I easily found "Steam-launcher" in the repository after doing a vanilla desktop-install and KSP just worked*. (*The first launch of Steam required the install of the mesa drivers). I'd tried first with Debian 7.7.0; initial FPS was about 0.2 so I put-in fglrx... that broke steam, as well as KSP. Thanks Ubuntu for making it so easy to get this old PC going again for a friend headed to college

[Aristarchus]

I found the solution to my problem on a thread that popped up yesterday.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100776-Terrain-textures-glitched-out

Yay, now I can play again!

[Taki117]

I'm having an issue locating my player.log file. The directory doesn't exist. I've used the "installer" provided by voidi, so KSP Runs beautifully. It's just I don't know where that log would be located. Using Ubuntu 14.04.

[Mecripp]

It's a hidden file you have to unhide goto home and CTRL H you will see .config in that folder you will see a unity3d.

[Discovery2000one]

So it seems that using right shift to transfer fuel doesn't work since I've updated to 0.90. Did they change the button for this?

Edit: So I guess they did change it. I had to manually change it in the settings.cfg file to RightShift again.

Edited December 26, 2014 by Discovery2000one

[Taki117]

It's a hidden file you have to unhide goto home and CTRL H you will see .config in that folder you will see a unity3d.

Naturally, thank you.

[madlemur]

Running Steam KSP (from command line, not via Steam) on lubuntu 14.?? (on my phone ATM) on an i7 laptop (Intel gfx). When I'm in flight, the fps drops to 1 or lower when I press a key. After I release the key, the system picks back up.