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Man-drivel

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I pronounce it as it ends up in Latvian language, so I really don't know how it is pronounced in English,
but the name came to being after Mandrake bought Connectiva (another distro), the main reason was a court order because on copyrights on the word Mandriva for some obscure, unknown French comic.

 

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I still have to find a driver for my modem so Linux can communicate with it. How did you get on?

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There's a whole bunch you can configure under "Configure My Computer". You can find that in the Start-menu-esque menu. Look for the boot configurations. Around there, you can set it so it boots with GNOME, or whatever other environments it comes with.

I get a plain black screen when I do that. And I have to manually shut off the computer to get out of it. The best that I could tell you is not to log out, but to restart or shut down.

I say man-drive-a, because I see the word "drive" in it. And most likely, I'll always say man-drive-a even if it turns out to be man-dree-va. Because I'm weird like that, I guess.

 

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I second what Avatar said:

Wikipedia.com is a cornucopia of information on just about anything, including Linux. Wikipedia.com is your friend. Go to Wikipedia and look up the article on a Linux distro, see how old the version is, before you decide to buy it.

Look, for example, at the Red Hat Linux article. What you have is the latest version, but Red Hat died two years ago. It pretty much only exists as the basis of other distros now, such as Mandriva, Yellow Dog, and ASPLinux.

Looking over at the the Mandriva Linux article, you see that the latest version is 2006.0, which is the version released just after mine, 10.2. Version 9.1 was released in 2003.

 

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it's Wikipedia.org, not '.com'

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Well, I'm not using a regular modem. It detected my ethernet card automatically, and I had to set some things for the gateway and DHCP (I just used the defaults though). What kind of modem do you have? I might be able to help find a driver and get it running.

I say Man-drive-a too, because I think it sounds better. But if it turns out to be the other way, I don't want to sound stupid if I'm talking to someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

Do you still want the Mandriva 2006 discs? I have them and I know they work now.

 

look guys i am not a genius when it comes to linux.
the latest versions of linux i bought was at a yard sale.
i went to the website given by avatar and looked around and i found 13, count 'em, 13 different flavors of linux. i have no clue as to what to download.

so, will someone please tell me what to download?

 

I was just as lost as you when I started. I just searched google for linux ISO downloads, and I noticed that one of the more common ones was Fedora Core. So I looked it up and the latest version was 5. Then Avatar said he uses it on his computer, so I knew it must still be good. Other than that, I noticed that mandrake linux was also popular, and that it is now Mandriva 2006.

I seem to be having pretty good luck with Mandriva 2006 so far. Though Fedora looked pretty good too. The only reason I couldn't work it was because my computer didn't like GRUB for some reason. So my suggestion would be to get either Fedora Core 5 or Mandriva 2006. But that's just me.

 

i think i'll stick with windows

 

Well, it seems Mandriva is the most recommended Linux around here. It's also the one that both RubiksMaster and I are using. So go with that. And if you get stuck, you'll have two people here to turn to for questions.

We all know what I mean... And both URLs go to the same place (for me) anyway. *shrugs*

HSP56 MR, manufactured by PCtel.

These modems apparently are no longer supported bythe company that made them. I think it has something to do with the fact that Northgate Innovations (the people who made this computer) went out of business.

Well yeah, there's that. But you know how stubborn I am.

Ja bitte.

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By the way, RubiksMaster:

Wikipedia.org

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rolleyes

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has some links from their Fedora Core article which you could study, if you still haven't quite solved your installation problems.

 

Nah, don't feel like it. I already have Mandriva running fine. Though maybe if I could use Fedora with LILO instead of GRUB. . . .

 

Post a screenshot of your new OS, man!

Here's a combined screenshot of both my Windows and Mandriva. The only thing that's changed about my Mandriva since that screenshot is that I have this wallpaper now.

 

Swap=virtual memory, and it's recommended. Windows has virtual memory, though it just uses a pagefile instead of a dedicated partition. Usually your swap should be comparable to your RAM, maybe twice as much. I have 512 MB RAM and 2 gigs of swap, for example. It's not FAT, though. You have to format it as swap.

You had 8 gigabytes of swap before?

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Congrats on your install! Weird, the problems you had with Fedora Core tho.

If you want a graphical login every time you start up, you should be able to do it by editing the /etc/inittab file as root. See if there's a line that looks like:

id:3:initdefault:

And change the "3" to a "5" (if you want to play a joke on someone else's machine, put either 0 or 6 there). I don't know if there's a graphical utility that'll do this for you.

 

Oh, okay. Does it matter at all where on the drive it is physically (if that makes sense)? Such as, could I place it between the Windows and Linux partition?

Well I didn't know.

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I don't see why not, provided you have unpartitioned space there. I think you can even play around with multiple swap partitions and stuff, though I don't see much point in it. One thing I'd be interested in knowing is if it's possible to get Windows to use Linux swap. It's a bit of a waste to have 2 different swap locations for 2 different OS's, when they essentially serve the same purpose.

 

Here's a screenshot of my desktop:

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OK, you all can see my new desktop here:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g305/th3juggler/newOS.jpg

 

OK now that everyone has Linux, the big question is, why bother if you already have windows xp?

Just what is the real advantage?

 

It's stable, safe, fast, free, open source and I can customize it to my hearts' content,
there are no activation codes, no DRM and can go on for months without a single restart,
besides I can do everything faster and there are many technical advantages, like no need for defragmentation, multiple desktops and multiple sessions at once, etc and I love the terminal.
Compared to Linux, Windows XP is boring, insecure, buggy and restricting, i.e., Linux is just a better OS.

 

What! XP boring?

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When I am having so much fun running Anti spyware and virus programs? And I just love the XP defrag. It's so relaxing to watch.

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What else would I do on a friday night?

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what's DRM?

unless linux uses some exotic file system it will become fragmented