Linux Newbie and Mandrake 10.0

[Zero-fill]

I'm a total newbie to linux and today I decided to install linux onto my laptop.

 

Overall the installation went ok except for the absence of the proper graphics driver and no nic drivers. Within 20mins I have KDE up and running on it. Working on my desk I plugged in a USB optical mouse which worked fine. I spent an hour or so customising the KDE desktop then I decided to go sit in a comfy chair in another part of the house to get to know the unix terminal so I unplugged the usb mouse and intended to use the track pad. This caused the system to hang so I pressed the power button to restart it. Now it only boots up the unix terminal and I cant get back into the nice GUI I spent hours seting up.

 

My question(s):

1. Does anyone know why the GUI wont boot any more?

2. Is there a command which can get you back into the GUI from the terminal. I've tried exit and logout which dont work

3.Where can I locate the hardware drivers for my laptop. The manufacturer only has the windows driver as far as I can see

 

My Laptop: IBM Thinkpad R40, Intel Celeron 1.8GHz, 512MB DDR RAM, ATI Mobility, Wireless LAN

[Ixthusdan]

startx

 

And welcome to Mandrakeusers.org!

[plati]

I checked out some Linux on Thinkpad pages and found this one on the R40

 

It has alot hints and tips for setting up the thinkpad and it's various peripherals. Theres also some links at the bottom. Hope this helps, if you have any problems, just ask.

 

EDIT: also found this which seems to have the driver status for each piece of hardware. Linux config about your touchpad, mousepad etc. can be found here.

 

Hope these help

Edited April 17, 2004 by plati

[Desire]

Hi Zero-fill,

Welcome to the board, to Mandrake and Linux in general.

I'll try to help you as much as possible

First of all I would like to say it is never a good thing to reset the computer when it is running and should be done as a last resort. In the future if it locks up try pressing Alt+Ctrl+Baskspace at the same time, this should get you into the terminal (command prompt) and from there you can either reload the GUI or reboot. If you want to reboot from the command prompt just type "shutdown -r now" and the system will reboot and the command should look like this (we'll pretend that you are user "user" and the name of you machine is "localhost")

 

to reboot

 

[user@localhost user]$ shutdown -r now

 

 

"2. Is there a command which can get you back into the GUI from the terminal. I've tried exit and logout which dont work"

 

Yes there is. From the prompt there are actually 2 ways to do this, type in "startx" which should bring you to the graphical login and from there you can load KDE, if you wish to go into KDE just type "startkde" and it should load KDE.

 

[user@localhost user]$ startx

[user@localhost user]$ startkde

 

From a graphical point of view once you get into KDE go to "Control Center > XFDrake> Options You will be given an option to "automatically start the graphical interface (XFree) upon booting. Would you like to start Xfree when you reboot?" Just click "Yes" Shutdown and reboot and it should be ok.

 

"3.Where can I locate the hardware drivers for my laptop. The manufacturer only has the windows driver as far as I can see, ATI Mobility, Wireless LAN"

 

 

If it's the wireless LAN I'm sorry but that is totally unfamiliar territory for me.

I do know ATI can be a problem, but nonetheless there should be drivers out there

I did find some info at the ATI site go to

ATI/ Linux/faqs

 

As for the reason it won't boot into KDE, I'll find out for you. I'm fairly sure I know why but just have to do some checking.

 

So I hope this has been some help to you

 

Sincerely,

Desire

Edited April 17, 2004 by Desire