[newbie] I'm completely lost
I've been tinkering with this Linux for some time, but I still don't understand it at all. I've read the posts on this message board (All 150+) every day, but everyone's completely out of my league with their responses. I have Mandrake Linux (I think 6.2). I managed to get it up and running, I can even connect to the internet. I have no idea how I did it. I am trying to get my sound card and NIC card to work. I downloaded some files that are supposed to be the drivers. They're in tar.gz format. I've gunzipped them, and even tarred them. I have a bunch of files now, and I have no idea what to do with them. There's an Adobe PDF with one of them. I downloaded the latest version of Acrobat to read it. It makes no sense. When I log out of KDE (Or any other GUI) I often lose my mouse. The cursor goes to the extreme upper right corner, and I can't do squat after that. All I can do is hit Reset. The computer's not locked up, but it won't let me do anything when I return to the GUI. I would imagine there was a command that could be executed which would activate the mouse again. Is there anyone out there willing to do some one-on-one tutoring, and help someone who's really really trying?
[newbie] Sound Card, Modem, Etc. configuration
I'm a complete newbie to Linux, so this may seem a little lame to most of you. I've been following these messages for some time looking for information on how to configure, install, and use my sound card and modem. I have a VIA sound card that has a (Red Hat) Linux driver on the CD. It's a *.gz file. I tried to use gunzip to unzip it, but then I don't know what to do with it after that. I noticed recently during the boot up process that I see a RED [Failed] go by. Most of what I see says [Passed]. I believe it has something to do with a sound card device failing, but it goes by too fast. (Is there any way to slow this down, or view a text file that shows the order in which things are executed, mounted, whatever, during the boot up process) I recently found out that my modem is obviously already configured for Linux. I configured a PPP connection that causes it to dial. I hear it dialing, I hear it connecting, but I have no way to check anything else. It will keep dialing and connecting about every 10 minutes, but I have no idea how to use that connection. Netscape doesn't show any way in it's GUI to configure it to use a specific PPP connection, and I can't get Netscape to navigate even when I'm connected. Any help with any of these would be greately appreciated. If anyone has any useful information from when they were learning Linux, I'm all ears.
[newbie] Brand new, and full of questions
I am completely new to Linux, and thoroughly confused, so please forgive my naivete. My system: Video:ATI Rage/RageII PCI (ati_m64) Sound: VIA PCI Audio Controller (Onboard) Modem: 5634BTS 56K Video Ready Modem (Hardware) Manuf: Texas Inst. LAN: Linksys LNEPCI II PCI Ethernet Adapter MB: VIA EPox EP-7KXA PRO:AMD Athlon Slot-A 650 MHz RAM:128 PC-100 SDRAM HD1: 20GB Maxtor HD2: 15GB WD First Question: I recently tried to install Linux-Mandrake 6.5 or 6.2 (Whichever the case may be, the cover says both) I already have Win 98, Win 2K, and Win NT on this computer, so I bought another hard drive for Linux. I used Partition commander to create a Linux partition on the second hard drive (Both a regular linux partition, and a swap partition). I installed it according to the rules, but LILO won't install. I can boot it from the boot disk that I created, but I can't boot it otherwise. I tried to read up on it in the manual, but that's in a different language. Second question: I booted Linux with the boot disk, and the GUI takes up more than my screen. I can go to the right, left, up, or down with the mouse and it will follow it, but it really seems strange. Is this normal?
