fuzzylizard

So it works now, eh? Congratulations are in order for not only getting the thing working, but also being willing enough to play around and work at it long enough to figure it out. Many people would have given up rather then face a challenge like that. That is the great thing about the open source community, problems do not stay as problems for long. Sooner or later someone is going to come up with a patch that will solve the problem. You are definitely not a Linux no-nothing anymore. :D With all the effort that you spent, don't forget to post a screenshot over in the 'Show off your desktop' thread. http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=6343

You could always try installing the Enterprise kernel from mandrake.

Start with this link: http://dominia.org/~jlee/inspiron/ It should have links to the files that you will need. Of course, then fun part will be getting them onto the notebook to begin with. In addition, you may want to send an email to the person who created that site and ask them for a little advice. Here are two more links for support with Dell Laptops http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-dell-laptops/ http://tuxmobil.org/dell.html Good Luck, your gonna need it

Yep, you are going to have to apply a patch to either the kernel or to xfree. Neither of which is an easy undertaking. You have two choices now, either admit defeat and curse dell or learn how to patch a kernel. The latter option is not for the faint of heart. It took me 4 years of playing with Linux before I ever played with the kernel. (I will probably get flamed for adding the part about giving up, but sometimes the battle is just not worth the casualties.)

Thanks. For Dell, you need to pick the Dell Flat Panel or laptop 1024 x 768 monitor. It should be about the 3rd or 4th option down under the dell section. As for the video bios thingy, you may need to install patch for XFree 86. XFree is the program that takes care of setting up the video and input sections of Linux. It is the program that allows you to run a desktop. If it ain't happy, then you ain't ever gonna get a nice shiny desktop to work. By the way, installing Linux onto some laptop computers can be a lesson in frustration, even for pros. So don't take this experience personally. There are only two LInux distributions that I can get to successfully run on my notebook -- Red Hat and Mandrake. This is because of a similiar bug with the integrated video and the bios.

Okay, either you have not configured your monitor and video card properly or you have another problem. While doing a little research over at http://www.linux-laptop.net I found that there may be a bug with the bios and the video. Although this is supposed to have been solved with the 2.4.20 with a further patch being required. If your problem is the later, than you have a fair ways to go before getting a usable LInux install. To make things even more complicated, you are probably using the new 2.6.3 kernel. So who knows if the patch for your notebook is compiled into it. For others, here is some more info: http://dominia.org/~jlee/inspiron/ So the fact that you are looking at the command line and not at a nice little desktop is the fault of the integrated video on your laptop, not your Linux install skills, most likely.

There's a real world out there somewhere? SCARY!

Not to be rude, but the next thing that you need to do is to go and find someone who knows what they are doing and get them to show you around linux for a bit. By the way, does your screen look something like the attached image? If it does, then you have logged into Linux. Congrats. Probably not what you were expecting. In terms of getting something that looks like windows, you may still have a long way to go and a lot more to learn.

As has already been stated: AM64 - This is for the new 64 bit Opteron processor from AMD. Do not download this, it won't work. I also agree that from the sounds of things, this may be what you downloaded before. i586 - This is the one that you need. The Celeron processor would fall into this category. Remember the old 386 and 486? This is where the numbers come from. The first Pentium was the 586 and the newer Pentiums and Celeron processors are 686. PP - This stands for Power Processor. This is the name of the chip that all Macs now use. Don't download this as it won't work either. As for Knoppix, yes it is as cool as Mandrake. However, it is also a different kind distribution. Knoppix runs completely from the CD and does not require being installed on your hard drive. As such, it makes playing with Linux a lot easier as all you need to do is to insert the Cd and reboot. Installing Mandrake, or any kind of Linux, can be quite a task (as you have found out). Knoppix skips this task and allows you to play and learn without having to do the install. I would strongly advice you to visit the Mandrake website and read through the install manual for the version that you download. These are usually available in pdf format and will make the install process a lot easier. In addition, pay attention to every step. Never ever just hit next in order to install. regardless of what people say, this is not Windows, and Mandrake requires a little thought when doing an install. (not much thought mind you, but a little) The key thing to take notice of is the last configure screen in the install. At the end you will get to a single screen that will list all the elements (except software) of your computer and whether they are configured or not. This includes the video card, monitor, networking, bootloader, printer, etc. When you get to this screen, make sure that everything is configured. You will know that things are configured by the fact that they will have all the configuration information listed after the item. Hope that helps.

There is, it is called Shell Script, of which bash is simply a form. There is also C shell, Korn Shell, and a few others. All of which are available to Linux (although, not always installed by default). However, all of these shells use a form of Shell Script. Bash is simply the most popular when it comes to Linux. (However, it is not necessarily the most powerfull or the easiest to use.) However, with all that said, Shell Script is not always the easiest, or most efficient, language to use. For an example of Shell Script, take a look at your .profile or .bashrc file. This is simply a Shell Script. Shell Script is composed of a combination of the commands that you use at the command line like mv, cp, grep, cat, find, and all the rest working together with various programming constructs like if statements and loops. Generally, you use things like if statements and loops to control the input and the output of various Linux commands.

Another little tip. If you are completely new to Linux, than why not download a Linux version called Knoppix. This is a version of Linux that fits onto a single CD. It is what is called a live Cd. this means that you put it into your computer, boot the computer and you can run an entire Linux distro straight from the CD. No need to install. And it does not touch the hard drive at all. This will allow you to play with Linux and get a feel for it without having to worry about doing the install. Here is the link to the download page. All you need to do is to download the ISO, burn it to a CD, boot your computer off the CD and start playing with linux. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

First of all, before you do anything, what kind of notebook are you trying to install Mandrake onto? In addition, check this site out for information on installing Linux (covers all kinds of different types of Linux) onto notebook computers. Navigating the site should be fairly self-explanatory. Here is the link: http://www.linux-laptop.net Before I ever try and install Mandrake, or Linux, onto a notebook I check this site first. It has articles written up by people that have tried to install Linux onto almost every notebook ever made. The nice thing is that if there are any little bugs or gotchas, then they will most likely be listed in the articles along with any tricks for getting past them. As for downloading Mandrake. Make sure that what you download is for an x86 computer. I believe that there is a version of Mandrake 9.2 that only works on a Mac. And definitely label them next time :o

How are you trying to install Java? The Enter key and the Space Bar key are standard ways of moving through a document using the command line inside of a shell. You are trying to do this inside of a terminal right?

You should be able to press the enter key and it will scroll the text line by line. If you press the space bar, it will scroll the text a page at a time. Eventually, you will get to a question as the bottom of the screen asking if you accept this EULA. Have you checked out the tutorial on installing java in the tutorial section?

Okay, cool. Thanks for the info. Not what I am looking for, but it still sounds interesting and something I will have to remember for the future.

Lots of questions. Login: when you were installing Mandrake, you were hopefully asked to create a user. For this user, you would have supplied a username and a password. When you get to the localhost login screen, you need to supply the username and the password of the user you created while installing Mandrake. If you do not remember going through this step and creating a user, than you should probably reinstall Mandrake to ensure that you do this. Also, so that you are consious of adding this user. Screens: This means that the software that controls what is called the X Server - technically called XFree 86 - can not find a setting that will work with your laptop screen. This generally means that you did not setup the video part correctly when you were doing the install. When you get to the end of the install, there is a screen that has a list of the different parts and whether they were configured or not. Do you remember what this last screen said and do you remember going through and setting up your video card and monitor? If you do not, then you need to go back and reinstall Mandrake taking extra care to check that everything on this last screen is configured properly. In addition, I would stronly suggest taking a trip over to the Mandrake website and reading through the install manual for mandrake. This will let you know what to expect and fill you in on a lot more detail concerning what is happening at each stage. Hope this helps, any more questions, just shout.

Yeah, I agree. Please stick around a start a thread that lists all of your questions. If you are truely a Linux and/or Mandrake know-nothing, than it would be real interesting to see what questions you do have. In addition, it might allow us to create a list of questions for other people who are in your situation that find their way to this board. Plus, most of the people here enjoy answering questions, that is why some of us are here. So, stick around, ask a question, and hopefully we can help you learn something. And welcome to Linux and Mandrake in particular.

Well to begin with Shell Script is its own language. Beyond that, I would probably list the languages in the following order: 1. Perl 2. Python 3. Ruby 4. C This does not include languages like C++ or Java as they tend to be a little heavy when it comes to scripting.

Your best bet is to pay a visit to http://www.linux-laptop.net and look for the model that you are planning on buying. See what people's experience has been like installing Linux onto that notebook. If you can't find the exact notebook, there will probably be ones that are similar there.

I took a quick look at the website, but was not able to clearly see what the app does. So, what does the app do? And what does it allow you to do with your wireless connection that the tools in Mandrake Control Center don't do?

Yes, at least with Dell laptops where this is true. The bug is that XFree is unable to properly communicate the amount of ram that the video card needs. This results in the BIOS only allocating about 640k - 1meg for the video card. This results in either XFree not working, or the monitor being run at either a decreased resolution or a decreased colour depth. With all that said. There is a very easy fix for this problem. Check this website out and some of the links off of it. http://geocities.com/randomnumbergenerator2001/ This problem seems to be limited to BIOS changes that Dell has made and should not affect other computers though. But since you do not list the model or brand of the notebook that you are getting, I thought I would list the problem anyway. In addition, this problem is not particular to Mandrake 9.2, it affects every kind of Linux you would wish to install on the computer.

Your best bet is to wait a few months till Mandrake 10 Final/Stable/Official (whatever it is called) comes out and all updates are integrated into the official CD's. This will save you a lot of time in terms of updating and will also allow you to present the best possible product to your friends. What are they going to think if you install the OS and than have to install and additional 400 megs of updates just to get it to run correctly?

This is a small thing, but don't forget to export your environment variables. export PATH export JAVA_HOME I'm sure you knew this though.

First step is to go to http://www.javasoft.com and download the java 1.4.2 sdk. This will give you all the things you need for compiling java code. As for an IDE, skip it if you are just learning. However, if you insist, here are some that I would recommend. jEdit Netbeans Eclipse (I have not actually tested those URLs, they are simply from memory) As for learning Java, check out the same site above - www.javasoft.com - for some tutorials. They have tutorials on just about every aspect of Java. Also, check out Beginning Java By Wrox. This is an excellent book for learning Java.

I can't give you the specifics, but there is a plugin for mplayer that will allow you to view almost all media that is out there right within the browser. I know that it works with Mozilla so should work with Firefox. As for a tutorial on how to set everything up, maybe someone else can supply that.