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Hi All, I'm a brand new convert to Linux. After much aggravation with the <cough>child of Mr Gates I took the plunge and dual booted my Athlon 2400+ with Mandrake 9.0. I have to say that despite all the concerns I had previously Linux was a breeze to install with this distro. X went in without a whimper or moan and worked "out of the box". My previous experience was with Redhat 5.0 which went horribly wrong when LILO chewed up my boot sector and spat out the pieces. Needless to say I was put off for a couple of years after that. I did accidentally kill the system yesterday with a kernel panic and have to reinstall the whole lot. However the second time around I did the install right first time and got everything running properly within about 2 hours. That includes Samba config and my router set-up to run my printer off CUPS (SMC 7004BR with an HP Deskjet 940C on the print server port). I'm sure all reading this could do that with their eyes shut from a command line, but I'm happy with my progress thus far :) I do have a couple of questions for the gurus though if you don't mind? 1. As above, Mandrake 9.0. The Mobo is an MSI K7N2-L with onboard network card. Obviously the card works (or how would I be here? ;o)) However it detects as "Ethernet card" and UNKNOWN_MODULE. Am I OK to leave it as that or should I try to make it behave properly? Perversely in MDK 9.1RC2 the network card recognises properly but won't work? Now that's a clear cut case of a computer doing what you told it to, not what you wanted it to! :) 2. Same distro with an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 32Mb AGP card. Doesn't recognise as a TV adaptor. The one website I've seen with a tutorial refers to Mandrake 8.1 and I've been advised best to deal with the specific distro and not try to modify something else. Anyone else have these two playing nicely? If so how, please? Kind regards, Julian On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 14:19, Brough, Tom wrote: > > These are just some of my thoughts on the subject of X > > Recently I have been contacted by potential users of Linux who have taken > the first step towards using it by attempting to install distros of their > PC's. I have installed many different distros, on many different machines > ranging from 386 - Athlon 1.8GHz machines, although my primary experience is > RedHat. For the most part I have been able to get X running without > resorting to having to download drivers and compile them. > > However these users have had problems which have required them to download > and compile drivers, or have exhausted all their efforts / options in terms > of configuration. Some of these user, while new to linux are very > "technically minded". I am very curious to know if other members of the > group have had similar problems with getting X to work, or heard similar > stories from new users, since this seems to be (IMO) an area that would put > most "non-technical" people off and hence inhibit the potential growth in > user base. Unfortunately we live in a world where if it aint pretty it wont > sell. While I would agree with anyone that linux as a whole has many > advantages over other proprietary operating systems, if users cant see the > GUI interface without serious configuration fiddling they will abandon it > and go back to something else. > > Even to myself it seems a poor show if you need to download source, compile > your own kernel and additional drivers in order to get a GUI interface. Is > it just me, or are we complacent people who tell others to go and Read The > Manual or say "well it works ok on my machine" ? Is there anything we can do > to make X "smarter" ? Do we need to lobby Graphics Cards Manufacturers ? Is > it time to admit that X configuration is a serious problem that (while > improving) needs to be resolved ? > > I only ask these questions because while I know that linux is not just about > GUI interfaces, to many users thats what they want, without any fuss. > > (constructive) comments please > > Tom > > Information in this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. > It is the intended solely for the person ( or persons) to whom it is > addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, > and please delete the message from your system immediately. The views in > this message are personal, they are not necessarily those of Torbay Council. > > > -- > The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG > Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the > message body to unsubscribe. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.