JonEberger

if everything is working fine, i'd stick with the 2006 mandriva (personally) a little longer. get the lay of the land, if you will. for the nic, use the link ftp://152.104.238.194/cn/nic/r1000_v1.04.tgz. issue the command tar -zxvf r1000_v1.04.tgz and that should unpack that tar'd and gzipped archive file to a directory named r1000_v1.04. Inside there should be instruction file named README which you can open with any text editor. the instructions in the directory mention that you need to have the kernel source installed. so at the terminal, you should do a uname -a and find your kernel name. the launch the mandriva control center (mcc) and login as root. you should then try to add teh package kernel-source (for the appropriate kernel). the instructions then go on to say that you should (as root) make clean modules make install depmod -a supposedly that should get you going. concerning your music woes, what types of music files are you trying to play? mp3? wma? m4a? you should be able to play mp3 with anything in mandriva. i don't think they've restricted their distro to be non-mp3 capable like others have. for m4a, there are several programs which can handle this. i use gtkpod personall and it seems to work well. for wma files, you can add this capability, but it's been so long since i've done it i couldn't point you in a proper direction. 4di is right about the firewall. if you're connected directly to your cable modem or internet connection (no router with built-in firewall) you should install a firewall. there is a default one in mandriva (if you look in the mcc it should be easy to find). you don't want to enable things like ftp and telnet servers for sure. if you're new to security, ssh and http servers maybe something you want to steer clear of for awhile also. but as with all linux, you learn the most from trying things out and getting burned on occasion. welcome to the board and good luck!

my guess is probably a lot.

ditto! i spent hours with castlevania ii on the nes. what a great game. man i miss my old nintendo. i've got to give props to the xbox 360 with gotham project racing though. man. what an awesome driving game.

the big issue for us was that i was a kid and mom and dad bought me video game consoles. they didn't cost $2000 at the time and were far more movable. even when they bought a computer, they didn't trust me on it for about 2 years. they thought i'd break it. silly parents. in retrospect, i can't blame them.

first off, welcome to the board. i hope you get some great linux help here. a lot of us have gotten immeasurable amounts of help while making some acquaintances online. i second neddie on the backup idea. back everything up that you think you could ever need. i'm not saying this because the install is quirky. in fact, the mandriva install is probably the best and most stable i've ever seen. it's less scary to me than the windows install. i'm saying this because many people (myself included) accidentally deleted the windows partition the first time i tried to install linux. you mentioned that you had one hard disk with two partitions. decide how much space you want to dedicate for linux. for the first time install, willie is probably right and 20 GB is plenty. but if you've got 200 GB of hard disk space, you could def. use more. you'll have to decide which partition you're going to take the space from. if you've got two partitions, it is probably best to make the non-windows partition have linux. just because then you don't risk ditching the other OS which you may need. if you choose to use all of the non-windows partition, then you might not have to repartition depending on how you choose to install Mandriva. you can opt to partition more, but you may not need to do so. if you only use part of either existing partition, you'll need to create another partition. KDE or GNOME? that has started quite a few discussions in the past. i prefer KDE over GNOME. but several users here prefer GNOME. willie was right again. just install both and find out which one you like the best.

my first console games were on the atari with space invaders, asteroids, frogger, and pac-man. they were fantastic. on the compy, there was some weird bass fishing game that my cousin had that i loved. but we also played sim city all the time. i also play doom and the original wolfenstein, but they always made me sick after about 2 hours. on a mac i also played this game called spectre and pong. good times.

hey paakwasi, welcome aboard! how old is your laptop? it would be hard for most of us to think back and give you a way through mcc to get the full resolution. do you know the video card and resolutions of your display? that might actually be in the manufacturer's documentation or you may be able to look it up online. there might be a nice and easy way of seeing which driver is being loaded and what the resolution is set to in mandrake in the control center (mcc is the command). if the laptop is relatively new, you should seriously consider installing a newer version. hardware support will be so much easier for you.

http://amd.streamload.com/jmernstb/Hosted/snapshot2.png It's fluxbox on Redhat with some transparencies. Nothing big.

so in response to some of your posts... 1. how are you connecting these together? are you connecting the server to a router and the client to the outgoing ports on the router? or are you connecting them directly. would this require a crossover? 2. you mention apache and http. apache is the web-server. the process name is typically httpd. 3. i'm with everyone who has discouraged ftp. 4. mail servers abound. just google linux and mailservers. 5. considering nfs, it's solid and well known. many companies and academic entities use openafs. it's also just a way of sharing files. 6. NIS (network information service) is what standardizes login names and such between server and clients. people can feel free to correct anything i write.

so it'd definitely make me take a second look. i'm typically not impressed enough (at first) with any distro to change to it. but the inclusion of cedega is an interesting addition for sure.

hi steve, i took your advice and read through some of his other posts. you're right. he seems like a nice enough guy. he's just frustrated. that's fair enough. acegap, hopefully you'll keep with linux since it seems like you have the desire and ability to do things with linux. one unfortunate complication to open source is that the people writing the software are often very technologically advanced. this sometimes skews the concept of "easy to use".

it really is a pretty common mistake that this is a board for the developers of mandriva. maybe there should be some disclaimer (separate from user agreements) when people sign up for the board that "WE ARE NOT THE MAKERS/DISTRIBUTORS OF MANDRIVA LINUX.....'. this common mistake however leads people to vent about frustrations. although i don't condone the attitude , i understand it.

you should try a 'urpmi.update -a' i believe. this should update your media. also, you can try the Easy-Urpmi link at the top of this page. It should help a lot.

on a similar vein, i have need of replacing the nic in my desktop which i was using with ndiswrapper. i was using a usb adapter from netgear but don't think i want to do that again. does anyone have any suggestions of PCI wireless NICs to purchase and install? thanks, jon

i probably shouldn't post this. but actually, after reading the thread, i mistook the title of the thread and thought someone had changed it to "not very friendly newb".

i, too, believe that manners are always best when pleasant. but, i also remember how frustrating linux was at first. when i started with linux there were people who thought that what i was trying to do was easy then as well. everyone here did a fantastic job at trying to help this person out. patience is a vritue (with linux and linux newbs). good job everybody!

in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts do you have an ifcfg-wlan0 script? if you didn't do the setup manually, then this may not have been created (who knows?). do you know that the wireless lan card works? does it work in windows? i had a nic that i struggled with for about a month which could detect the networks but never connect. after trying it on several different computers (some with windows) and going through several downloads of drivers and ndiswrapper, the nic was realized to be the problem. good luck!

i agree. i see no point in moving it from your /home partition if you're the only one using the entire machine. in many ways, isn't this more security for your computer?

You expected a flame-war? :P well...honestly....yes.

if you're just doing this for one machine, it seems like a lot of difficulty.

i really expected this thread to have more posts. as much as forever i was a kde advocate, i never got into the konqueror. it seems fine and i'm sure it's a good browser. i remain a fan of the firefox. i have no concrete reason for my prejudice, and may even give konqueror a try later today.

2nd that.

those are really sharp. the chromosome-type graphics with the infinity symbols really appeal to me.

did you test for md5 or sha1 sums on the disk?

i think tar can also split stuff.