Aomighty

The main thing is if you are: 1. Into computers, 2. Curious, and 3. Ready to learn, you should survive the lurning curve. That's the main thing you need to survive. For me this was about 2 1/2 months of the summer before I was fully comfortable with Linux as I was with Windows, but that was with much time investment.

The reasons for Linux differs per person. For a corporation they do it for security and cost mainly. For a programmer they do it for the richness of options and the community-base. Linux is as varied as you wish it to be. For me, it was 1. The ability to tinker with your system to your heart's desire. 2. The knowledge that my hardware is being used to the max. Linux programs are often very efficient. 3. The choice of what I want my system to do, and not the other way around, and to be free of EULA's. 4. Geek-value :).

Hmm... we should email torvalds@osdl.org and ask him lol /jk.

First of all, mods, if you think this should be in another section, move away, I wasn't sure where to put it :).

Anyway, recently I switched to Debian, and though I like Mandrake quite a bit, I need the hard drive space it's using. So, I was going to delete the partition. First of all, here's what the df command reveals:

/dev/sda6 15741824 5995612 8946676 41% /

tmpfs 257508 0 257508 0% /dev/shm

/dev/sda5 15330240 8961268 5901724 61% /mnt/mandrake

/dev/sda1 46082420 16707836 29374584 37% /mnt/windows

sda6 is the debian partition, wheras /dev/shm is swap. When I tried to delete sda5, it renumbered sda6 to sda5 and sda7 to sda6. Now, this presents a problem because now Debian will be unbootable, as it'll be looking for sda6 still and try to boot from the swap! So, if I just delet sda5 and sda7 and remake the swap between windows and Debian, thus keeping Debian at sda6, it should boot okay, right? Logically, I think yes, but before I do it, I wanted to check with all of you.

Second, how do you make a copy of grub on a boot floppy? I haven't been able to find it on Google very readily.

Thanks all. I just don't want to kill my installation :).

I know you've already switched, but you might try changing in the mplayer.conf ao=arts to ao=alsa. Dunno if that would work or not.

I agree with Scoopy. For me as well the one on mozilla.org is faster than the binary RPM.

Well, I guess I'll just type my password to log into xdm every time. I experimented some and I can't think of any way to do this. Thanks for fixing the "kate" problem with xhosts.

Well, it start kde this time, however, the white console window is still there, and when I start a konsole window and such it'll say "kde is already running, etc". Is there any other file I could put it in? Maybe one of the rc.d files and such?

Well, I tried as you said, and it didn't seem to make a difference. I then tried running xhost + as root and now I can open kate and such as root! :)

Anyway, I figured out, it seems the problem itself is not with kdm. If I use Ctr+Alt+Backspace to restart X after starting with KDM, then it goes to a KDM login screen like it should, and if I login goes to the prompt. The missing step is that it doesn't automatically do "startkde". That's all I need to do. Adding it to my .bashrc didn't work. Any ideas on why it doesn't startkde or how I could make it do so?

While, in /etc/inittab, it says at the top:

# /etc/inittab: init(8) configuration.

# $Id: inittab,v 1.91 2002/01/25 13:35:21 miquels Exp $

# The default runlevel.

id:2:initdefault:

I tried changing the default to 5, and it does the same thing. KDM won't even work with runlevel 2 now. I set it up "supposedly" to use KDM with "dpkg-reconfigure kdm" and it starts xdm again!

Also, make sure not to use Konqueror for web browsing ever. At least for me, it's horrendously slow (something like 10 times as fast) when compared to Firefox, in both Mandrake, Debian and Knoppix.

Now that's dedication :).

There's a motto I've come up with for learning Linux for your first time, and it's something like what happened to me:

You keep hitting your head against a brick wall and finally you smash through and Linux is working! lol This guy jumped over the brick wall though XD

Distro is Debian pure, 3.1 stable. Here's the problem:

If I start xdm, it will always prompt me for a username and password, however, since I'm the only one using the computer, I want auto-login. So I resort to kdm.

When I start kdm, even though I have it all configured to auto-login and all (as well as using dpkg-reconfigure to make sure it's starting kdm and not xdm), all it gives me is a little console prompt in a white box (a screenshot is included). If I type startkde it works like normal, but I have to keep the box open or KDE will close. What am I doing wrong with the kdm config?

, or am I doing anything wrong at all?

I believe the problem is something with my .Xauthority file, as if I try to start synaptic, for example, as root, it gives me the following:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server

Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key

However, starting synaptic with "sudo synaptic" works fine. :unsure:

I tried copying over my Mandrake .Xauthority file, and it made no difference. Someone brought up the possibility of GTK libraries not installed, but both libstdc++5 and libstdc++6 are installed. Any ideas of what other GTK libraries I might need?

Also, the kdm log file shows nothing strange. Seems like it just starts up okay. Here's a screenshot of what happens when I start it up:

Thanks again all :).

I'm using pure Debian, and you can install only what you need quite easily. With the discs, it'll eventually come to a "task-based" installation: Desktop, various Servers, and manually select packages. You also have the option to check nothing and go about your business. You can check the server and then manually install X and IceWM or whatever you want to use (what I did), which'll work fine and result in reduced hard drive space, as the Desktop installation installs a bunch of stuff you don't need :).

Thanks all. I've got it working by installing libstdc++6. However, I now have one other problem, which is with display managers. If I start xdm, it will always prompt me for a username and password, however, since I'm the only one using the computer, I want auto-login. So I resort to kdm.

When I start kdm, even though I have it all configured to auto-login and all (as well as using dpkg-reconfigure to make sure it's starting kdm and not xdm), all it gives me is a little console prompt in a white box (a screenshot is included). If I type startkde it works like normal, but I have to keep the box open or KDE will close. What am I doing wrong with the kdm config?

, or am I doing anything wrong at all?

Just thought it might be related :).

Btw, I'm using Debian, though I don't think that would change anything here. If you want to move the topic that's fine by me.

Every time I try to start Firefox, Thunderbird, or any app that i start from konsole (I apt-getted them), I get the following error:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server

Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key

(firefox-bin:2815): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

Doing some googling, it appears that using xhost +username or xhost +hostname (I assume that's the hostname you gave during install, right?) should fix it. I have tried this (as root as well) with X both not running and running, and it didn't seem to fix it. If I run "startx" it works fine. Not sure why it wouldn't be running that anyway though...

When I installed Debian, I installed it with a minimal install, only installing the bare necessities of what I needed at the time, hoping to avoid bloat. Just wondering if a package could be missing or something.

Thanks all!

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

Hmm... Never happens with me. My Linux browsing is the same and my download is WAY faster. I'm using my router as a DNS server though so that might explain it. ISP is Comcast, who officially offers NO tech support for Linux.

What you can do is go to your local retailer and if you need better specs, write down the model number and look it up online and see if it works. Plus, if you've already seen it, it doesn't matter as much what the specs are, right?

It might be that you need to set up the connection itself, the device being initialized but not configured. Try going into MCC->Setup a Network Interface, and follow the directions from there. I believe it will autodetect your settings, and if not, manually select your device from the list. Hopefully that's the problem.

Cool, thank you Thac! I'm not gonna use them at the moment, cuz I don't want to risk hurting things, but I might in a bit.

Where can I find those? kde.org?

Nah, I'm using Mandriva LE2005 (the free version). Can I not use Thac's RPMs and should just wait for an official update to KDE? I'm currently running 3.3.2.

Well, I deactivated jpackage and updates, because that's what Thac said to do earlier. "To use this correctly, only use main contrib and plf." Should I add them anyway?

When trying to do urpmi kdebase for me, it says, some packages cannot be installed:

kdeartwork-3.4.0-11.mdk10.1.thac.i586 (due to missing libkdebase4-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586)

kdebase-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586 (due to missing libkdebase4-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586)

kdebase-konsole-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586 (due to missing libkdebase4-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586)

kdebase-progs-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586 (due to missing libkdebase4-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586)

libkdebase4-3.4.0-22.mdk10.1.thac.i586 (due to unsatisfied libraw1394.so.5)

Continue?

Is this going to be a problem?

The name of the kernel source is prefaced with 2.6, so instead of 2.11-6mdk, it would be 2.6-2.6.11-6mdk, that may be your problem in searching for it, as it eluded me for quite a while.

Don't you just love backwards compatibility? I gotta try something like that someday.