Long, sad story:
I downloaded Mandrake distro...6.1(Cassinini) evidently is the only one
available on all the mirrors I tried...for my first ever attempt at Linux.
Installed it in a partition on a Compaq Deskpro 2000 (5166/2500), 80 megs
RAM, along with Win 95. Did the default Workstation setup.
(1) First time discovered whole bunches of packages weren't there (never
tried to FTP that much stuff at once before, now have a better FTP client
that tells me what didn't make it) Go back, get everything, try again
(2-?) Everything seems to work fine except when configuring X, made all the
choices that seemed logical, gets to test and says "There is a problem with
your configuration, blah, blah" Go read stuff, learn how to use console
mode/vi to read stuff, learn how to run xf86config, chase thru websites and
newsgroups (still haven't figured out where HOWTO's are hiding), etc.,
best I can get is that when I run startx something that looks like it is
supposed to be KDE comes up...but it is a mangled wreck of a thing, with
disconnected blocks of screen elements semi-randomly grouped about the
screen, looking like a GUI Picasso might have designed.
Start to believe what everything says about needing to know details about
video and monitor. So...
Video is CL 5436, 1mb RAM, according to docs.
Monitor is CTX VL700 (1765), with horiz range of 30-70 Hz & vert range of
50-160 Hz according to docs.
So, go back in and run xf86config and do everything custom that isn't
clearly listed, no guessing. Run startx, best results so far, clearly real
screen elements (mailbox, what looks like a performance monitor graphing)
but way to big and the mouse cursor is uncontrollable...and won't cycle
thru screen resolutions with ctrl-alt-+/-.
I'm giving it one more chance. Machine in question is at work and I am at
home for the long weekend. Anybody still reading this list, I would
appreciate any suggestions on things to do, FAQs to read, files to
download, etc. If I can't get it done Tuesday on such a generic
off-the-shelf platform, I'll have to flush it and recommend sticking with
Win95/98/NT.
But I really *want* this to succeed!
