richfly

Ouch. Well, if you're completely new to Linux, may I recommend an excellent starter book, Test Driving Linux by David Brickner. From Amazon.com (USA): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846 or Amazon.co.uk (UK) http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...3818782-0352637 . It uses a "Live CD" version of Mandrake 10.0, so it's a good intro in more than one way!

I don't think it's chicken at all. You want something that works, so stick with what does.

Ouch. Well, if you're completely new to Linux, may I recommend an excellent starter book, Test Driving Linux by David Brickner. From Amazon.com (USA): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...099939?v=glance or Amazon.co.uk (UK) http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...3818782-0352637 It's not designed for server installations, more the desktop, but a good intro nonetheless.

Thanks, AussiJohn, but they weren't ISO's, but 'real' CD's, just as Reiver Fluffi mentions in their post. jboy, thanks for the info, but it's all 'geek' to me, I'm afraid! What I would be after would be a pdf file, or the online version of the manual that goes in the box version. (You know, the one that starts "Hallo John. Hallo Janet. Have you switched your computer on? ")! Hi, Reiver Fluffi, yes, I think you're right. Actually, the install went OK - I could tell that from the way it booted up into the command line. When I put in my user name and user password, I was in the right place. Just not the GUI I was expecting, and since I don't know command-line-speak, I couldn't go any further! Unfortunately, I don't have have broadband (can't afford it). I will wait for the new version due out next month, as a cover disk (BOUND to happen sooner or later!).

Hi AussieJohn. I was, and still am, looking for a Linux that an average computer-user can use from scratch, and not need to go poking under the bonnet until they feel more confident. Windows, I have to say, does that. I have NEVER, EVER, had a problem installing Windows - right from 95 through to XP. You always end up with something you can use, even if you have to customise later on. (Or even sooner!). Linux never does that for me. It's always 50:50, and when it fails, like yesterday, it's not easy to sort out. From that perspective, it fails to live up to Windows. As for manuals, yes of course, but where are they? Have Mandriva put anything online to download? Not as far as I can tell. On the other hand, books about Windows (Media Center/XP/NT/2000/98/95) are available in my local library. I am no fan of Microsoft. I find them extortionate, manipulative, and under-hand to the point of criminality. But one thing (the only thing) they get outstandingly right is to make user-friendly software. Linux, so far, doesn't. Linux will persevere, and expand, if only because a mixture of economics (esp, in the Third World), ethical integrity and sheer inventiveness won't let it die. But it's frustrating not to be able to find a distro that can just 'do' things, the way that Windows can.

Downloading is fine, if you have broadband (I don't, can't afford it), and if you know how to handle ISO's, or compile ftp server downloads (yes, I've seen both in my time!). The other recommendation I will make here (& elsewhere!) is that, if you're completely new to Linux, hold off on buying a distro, and go instead for an excellent starter book, Test Driving Linux by David Brickner. (If your 3 CD's still fail to install, take that Mandriva packet, your till receipt, your debit/credit card if you used that, and go get your money back! If it cost you £10, which mine did, then this book is the same price, and works better as a decent introduction to Linux!). From Amazon.com (USA): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...099939?v=glance or Amazon.co.uk (UK) http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...3818782-0352637

The other recommendation I wil make here (& elsewhere!) is that, if you're completely new to Linux, hold off on buying a distro, and go instead for an excellent starter book, Test Driving Linux by David Brickner. From Amazon.com (USA): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...099939?v=glance or Amazon.co.uk (UK) http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...3818782-0352637

Hah. This is the W H Smith edition I eventually gave up on and took back. My experience was different to yours, though. When that first screen comes up, just hit your "Enter" button, to start it off. (It worked for me). Mandriva will partition during the install, so you don't need to create a partition beforehand. But make sure you've defragged your Winsows before you start, because it will partition the free space on your hard drive, and if you have odd stray bits of file, they may get wiped out! The other thing to be sure of is that your hard drive is big enough. These days, 80GB seems to be stanbdard, though 40GB will be fine. If you have about 20GB free space beyond the Windows installation, you should be OK.

Umm. I'd say that your computer really REALLY needs an upgrade, I'm afraid! (I've just pushed a friend into this, and he had an 800MHz machine with 256 MB SD-RAM. Running WinME, and clearly failing to do that, hence the hardware upgrade!). I would guess from your spec list that your computer is using the older EDO-RAM for its 32MB, and not even SD-RAM, which means that it's going to really struggle. Found this on another web-site, for example: I put mandrake 10.1 on my laptop (PIII 700mhz, 320 mb RAM, 20 gig hard drive, similar to yours) and wasn't very pleased with the performance, things would lag a bit when using alot of applications but otherwise the OS ran fine and had no compatability issues. If you are still interested in Linux generally, why not try Ubuntu, or one of the fit-on-a-disk "Live CD" ones, like Knoppix or Morphix? You need something small and light, and the big players (SuSE, Mandriva, Fedora) seem to be going for the big modern computers (you know, 2-3 GHz processors, zillions of MB RAM, that kind of thing). Surprisingly, I couldn't find the spec list on the Mandriva site, so I can't be more specific.

Another guess - but it may be due to the customisation...? Have you tried just going with the default install? (I wouldn't have thought the customised WinXP installation would get in the way, as it's a separate partition. Mind you, if you didn't defrag it before you started, you may lose bits of it when Mandriva partitions the free space!).

This is just a guess, mind you, but you mention in your second post you bought an "ISO". That's just an "image", not the real install disk. So the first thing you need to do is (in Windows) use your Nero Burning software to write that ISO disk onto proper disks (I believe the "Make Data CD" is the Nero 6 option). Did you do that, already? That may be why this "compressed loopback" message is appearing...? This is another possible problem. How big is your hard drive? You need, I would say, at least a decent 20-40GB disk to have 2 OS's installed concurrently.

LOL! SO easy to write, but harder to do! I got a "localhost login", which - after trying various options - I went into as just me, then used "su" (something I remembered from a brief brush with Unix last year), then the root password, and finally! - "XFdrake". THAT was a story unto itself, mind you, and after some more guesswork and a bit of luck, I finally found an option that worked (SiS 630, again, remembered from a previous encounter some months ago in Windows). Thank you thank you thank you. This was a life-saver for my blood pressure. Yep, I (finally) did manage this, after finally just crashing XFdrake because it kept going round in circles. Redoing it all the second time was easier, then this "startx" command took me into the GUI. Of course, the internet doesn't work, because in Unix/Linux you have to start up some other thing which I can't remember the name of, before you can use email or browsers.. But at least I was able to find the "Control Center" and change the default bootloader option to Windows. Phew! At least now I get to go where I want! Er. No. This doesn't mean squat to me. Sorry. No - remember, I took it all back to the seller. What I was after was to se if the average computer user could install this Linux package and get going, just (mostly) WinXP does. Well, on this experience, not so. I'm glad I took it back to W H Smith and got my money back.

Apologies if this is in the wrong place, but I'm completely new to this! I bought a specially packaged edition of Mandriva LE 2005 from WH Smith (large newsagent outlet in the UK) this morning, wanting to see what Linux/Mandriva was like. The install went OK (3 CD's), but when the time came to reboot into the GUI for the first time, all I got was a shell command line. I re-installed, with no improvement, and after staring blankly at this for a while, and fiddling a bit with the few commands I knew or could discover, I took it back to WH Smith and told them it didn't work properly, that I didn't know why, and got my money back. It has dawned on me, 3 hours later, that the possible reason it didn't boot 'properly' was that it doesn't recognise my monitor (an old Compaq 171S). I had noted in the final listing that this was unconfigured, but thought, like Windows, it would sort out some kind of default for anything it needed to run effectively. Does anyone know of any command sequence I can use in the "bash shell" to sort this out?