egorgry

I've never used ymessanger. I use gaim for all my msg needs. Run it from teh command line and see what output you get.

Welcome drska, I always recommend Debian but lately I've been enjoying ubuntu and recomending it to people who ask. I've never used winex so I can't comment on that. I find it much easier just having a dual boot system for gaming. ubuntu has all the apps you'll need and the ease of apt for pkg management. Gentoo is great you just need some time to set it up. I've used Slack and I'm not a big fan. I've never bothered with fedora because after my expierence with Mandrake I just don't like RPM distros. Fedora has a lot of support here so you will find lots of friendly advice if you choose fedora. Any linux distro will give you what you want just and all have advatages and disadvantages you just got to find what fits your style best. For me it's Debian/sid for you it may be gentoo. Try a couple different ones and see what ya like. There are some great people on here never be afraid to ask questions even if you think they are dumb. We we're all newbies once. http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

I personly like to keep /home a seperate partition. It's easy to back up and if you need to rebuild you won't loose your data in /home. However I know a lot of people that just use / and swap. It's all a matter of preference. I strongly urge anyone who ask to use seperate /home though it give me awarm and fuzzy feeling. Of course this won't help you if you loose the whole disk.

Quote: Well this car is automatic, it's systematic, it's hydromatic Why it's greased lightnin'! sorry couldn't resist. I've been interested in doing without swap. Next system I build will have at least 1 gig of ram so I guess I'll go for it.

I don't use /boot but here is what I normally do. 5 gig to / 512 to swap or same as your memory. This could be a whole new thread. some say 1.5x your memory, I do that in servers only. Some don't use swap at all. I give all the leftover disk to /home

Do you get sound when you log in as root? if so it may be permissions this is a common problem on some distros. Login to the desktop of your choice as root and try to play an MP3 if that works then you may need to add yourself to the audio group. adduser yourname audio to verify groups yourname you should see something like this.. [10/09/04][greg@otis:~]$ groups greg greg : greg disk lp cdrom audio src video users if that doesn't work then cd /dev ls -l dsp* you should see that all things dsp are owned by root and group is audio. something like this... crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 Jun 30 12:17 /dev/dsp crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 19 Jun 30 12:17 /dev/dsp1 crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 35 Jun 30 12:17 /dev/dsp2 crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 51 Jun 30 12:17 /dev/dsp3 if not then do this chgrp audio dsp* chmod 660 dsp* that should do it assuming it's a permissions issue Good luck and don't leave us hanging. It's nice to see resolved issues. [Edited by egorgry on 2004-10-09 11:12:14]

Originally posted by crazykillerman: Quote: Try creating .xinitrc file in your home directory. Enter this in a terminal window: "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc that <i>should</I> do it as I believe this is one of the first files it checks. Apologies for the inittab comment above...was at work, brain wasnt working well. inittab is for changing run levels, not default window managers. This will work for sure.

Download the sarge or woody net install iso, I know it's weird but hear me out. go through the install then when you get asked to supply your apt sources choose to edit the list by hand it will open up an editor just put in the sid sources of your choice. you can use mine. deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/ sid/non-US main contrib deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/ sid/non-US main contrib deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main # deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main #Mplayer # deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main #Emule deb http://gunnm.org/~soda/ unstable main contrib deb-src http://gunnm.org/~soda/ unstable main contrib #gnome-blog deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free *EDIT* I know this may not be teh answer to your question but imo this is the best way to install sid. an iso image can be found here if you still want to download a big ol file. http://ftp.kfki.hu/linux/cdimages/debian-unofficial/sid-dvd/

don't mess with inittab. What distro are you using, what desktop, and login manager? I think Mandrake uses some custom script and I know nothing about fedora. The above mentioned info would be helpful. example I'm running... Debain = distro Gnome = Desktop gdm = login manager let us know this should be an easy fix.

I'm running the latest drivers from nvidia with a custom 2.6.8 kernel on Debian Sid. The nvidia scripts works well in most cases but I have trouble with the custom kernel. unless you have special needs the nvidia install scripts is usually the best way to go. I know nvidia did away with there official rpms to focus on a universial driver. fun screen shot Here.

I've set up sarge with the beta installer and it was a piece of cake. I think it's gonna be a huge improvment and get people interested in Debian and once you get use to apt ther is nothing else that compares. I might not be teh best judge. My method of installing Debian is usually custom netboot.iso install with the unstable apt sources then an imediate kernel compile to teh latest and greatest so I guess anything is easier than that.

I agree those live cd's are the greatest. I like morphix and phlak alot. if you then choose to install I recommend suse or fedora if you want to use it for IT your customers. Debian is great I use love and would never use anything else but it's not for the faint of heart and it doess't have a chance in IT.

edit /etc/X11/default-display-manager with your editor of choice... vi of course then put in one line /usr/bin/gdm save the file and then restart X pkill X will kill then respawn the x server

I'm confused. ubuntu did not set up the Xserver for you? you have no graphical desktop? If you have gnome running then X should be there. Thenyou can just type sudo apt-get install fluxbox.

Daimienb2003, Sounds like you have the right positve attitude to take on linux. Just wondering if you decided on which Distro you're gonna run. Good luck, have fun, just remember if you get frustrated it's all worth it in the end. I find that my debian sid (unstable) box is less maintence then an XP install. I'm always just an apt-get away from any application or update I want.

Originally posted by rubel: Quote: i need a gmail account badly to get rid of hotmail... PM me I have plenty to give.

I agree with buglamp to a degree. I don't think linux sucks but there is a learning curve. you can use Fink under osx and get some great x11 apps to run on teh macs but you need to invest some big money to get a mac. Not always the best solution for people. however you may find this article to answer some of your questions. I'm not too knowledgable on this subject.

try dmesg | grep USB | more you should see some output like this... Quote: USB Mass Storage device found at 2 USB Mass Storage support registered. hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found ehci_hcd 0000:02:04.2: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 ehci_hcd 0000:02:04.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5 ehci_hcd 0000:02:04.2: USB 2.0 enabled, EHCI 0.95, driver 2004-May-10 and lsmod | grep usb Quote: usb_storage 99728 0 usbkbd 6144 0 usbcore 100836 7 ehci_hcd,usb_storage,ohci_hcd,uhci_hcd,usbkbd If you get nothing, or some errors then usb is not enabled. If this was debian I'd check to see if usb support is in the kernel. I'd also check to see if usb is disable in the bios. I've never used redhat or fedora so maybe some can tell you if there is an easier way, maybe Kudzu? I like to install usbview it's a nice little gui for usb devices.

Typing uname -a at the command line will tell you your kernel. To see if you have the kernel source got to /usr/src/ there should be a symlink in there called linux pointing to the kernel source. I think you can get the source from the MDK CDs just install teh RPM it should set it up for you. If not you may need to link the kernel source to /usr/src/linux. should look something like this. Quote: [09/26/04][greg@otis:/usr/src]$ uname -a Linux otis 2.6.8.egorgry #1 Sun Sep 5 15:03:24 EDT 2004 i686 GNU/Linux [09/26/04][greg@otis:/usr/src]$ ll total 8 drwxr-sr-x 18 greg src 4096 Sep 10 16:34 kernel-source-2.6.8 lrwxr-xr-x 1 greg src 20 Sep 5 13:49 linux -> kernel-source-2.6.8/ drwxr-sr-x 4 greg src 4096 Aug 5 17:09 modules

Sony laptops are usually a bad choice for linux. Sony is so proprietary it's frustrating. I'd check here http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/sony.html if you haven't already. Look at similar models and read what others have done first. I'm still looking for my perfect laptop but the main thing is full linux compatibility, for me it always comes back to an IBM thinkpad. Too bad the they are not as [censored]y as the Vaios. Good luck I'll keep my eyes open for anything that may help. You could also try a live cd like http://www.knoppix.org/ or my fav http://www.phlak.org/ to check out compatability.

I've been testing a new distro called ubuntu linux it's based off of Debian and comes with gnome 2.8, kernel 2.6.8. They have some interesting ideas in there. It's worth a look imo. It uses the debian installer and does an excellent job at hardware detection for the three systmes I've installed it on. it's a great way to get a nice, current, clean, install of debian. I even had my total newbie neighbor install it and it only took him 20 minutes everything was working and he's a windows user :gasp: just thought i'd share. http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

I feels fast. I have it on a p3 500 w/ 768mb of ram. It is noticibly faster than the suse 9 install and it runs real nice on my friends laptop 300mhz 512 of ram.

as root chmod -R 777 / just kidding DON'T DO THAT!! as usual Dapper Dans advice is dead on. Just one thing i'd like to add, if you are using Nautilus as root from your user enviornment type nautilus --nodesktop to avoid loading roots desktop enviornment on top of your users desktop

Originally posted by crazykillerman: Quote: Quick Question: How do you get the ability to invite a person to GMail??? Anything wild or crazy involved? They just appear in your gmail account.

I have six invites now. I'll give em out to people who PM me. It's too confusing sending invites to emails posted on the board and it's not fair if I send one and iamroot sends one to the same person. Plus it keeps your email safer from spambots.