Dapper Dan

I usually just go as root... mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 cd /mnt/hda5 ...and you're in.

It's a really hard question, since I find many things I like in several distros. I run Fedora at our radio station. It seems to be friendly to our employees. We run Fedora Core two on two machines and Core one on another. At home, I have on my hard drive, in this order... Fedora Core 2 Mandrake 7.2 Suse 9.1 Pro Mandrake 9.1 Mandrake 7.2 is really just a hobby distro like Red Hat 6.2 which I have on another older machine. It fascinates me to see how Linux distros looked and felt years ago! Right now, I'm trying to get Mandrake 7.2 to recognize an old 3com pci modem. You can learn a lot from an older version! The newer distros have become so easy they're almost no fun anymore! I hope to also install either Mepis or Ubuntu to my hard drive. My wife uses Mepis RC4, which seems a very good choice for laptops. I'm not smart enough to figure out Gentoo, so I don't know about it. Of the Live CD distros, I like Morphix, Mepis, Kanotix, Damn Small and Ubuntu. All are Debian based! Of the "Big" distros, SuSE seems to do almost everyting better than the others I've tried. It seems to offer more choices and flexibility. If I was sent to a desert island for three years and could only take one distro, it would be SuSE 9.1 Pro.

So I can better answer questions about Mandrake, I just installed Mandrake 9.1 at the end of my HD, and yes it does come with K3b, the GOD of all cd burner/writers! You should see it in your menu. If you don't. open a terminal and go: k3b [enter] And it should come up.

Yes, there is something charming about a woman who prefers Gnome! My wife used Gnome when I had Morphix-Gnome 4.1 on her laptop. Right now she uses KDE with Mepis, but I'm thinking seriously about getting her back into Gnome with Ubuntu! 8)

On a kind of related note, if y'all are like me, I have several 56 K internal modems all over the place, as the result of moving boxes over to cable or DSL. A few days ago, I decided to go through all of them just to see if any would work under Linux. To my surprise and delight, fully two of the nine I tried actually worked! One was a really old 16 bit card that could only manage 9600. But one was an old 3Com PCI that got 51000! I thik I'll take the rest to the shooting range and see how they stand up to my Colt 45...

pr-man, think about it this way. Remember how confusing and difficult it was when you first sat in front of a computer? You're essentially starting over again if you decide to use Linux, so for a while at least, it's going to be confusing and difficult.

Except for the gaming, you can do all of those things in Linux with ease. At the risk of sounding offensive, which I certainly don't intend, for me, it's not just about using Linux, it's about NOT having to use Windows! I started using Linux because I could never sleep at night worrying about the computers at my radio station getting infected with viruses. A friend suggested I should check into Linux. I did, the road was rough at times, but now I use it in business, get to sleep at night, and don't worry about viruses. The added advantages are, no disk checks, defragging, illegal operations, crashes and reboots, (although I realize Windows is far better about this than it used to be), no Trojan horses, worms, browser hijackings, paying for Norton and McCaffee, (which may or may not save your system from getting hosed), and no other expensive software I must constantly upgrade. Most importantly, Bill and Steve can no longer lay claim to my bank account every two to three years, allowing me to feel liberated and free. In the process I get a highly configurable operating system that is flexible, (and fixable) enough to do almost anything I can imagine. I play Team Fortress on line, Half-Life and its mods, and they work just as well as under Windows. I perhaps think better. I get blistering pings in Linux that I never got with Windows on this same box. Other games I play that run satisfactorily are Starcraft, Trespasser and a few others. Egorgry makes excellent points about the Geek/hobbiest aspect. Once I got over the learning curve, (which is only difficult if you come from a Windows frame of mind), I became, and still am, utterly fascinated with Linux. I love pushing the outside of the envelope and finding out what else this magical, stable, kick ass operating system can do! It's just plain challenging and fun! If anybody had suggested that in three years time, I'd be a Linux computer Geek, I'd have laughed. I'm not a Linux Geek because Linux is so difficult, I'm one because I love making it work for me at home and in my businesses.

Hi pandimic and welcome! We use QuickBooks 2000Pro, and it works pretty much flawlessly. The only problem we have is when we print invoices with our station logo, it will only come out in black and white and not in color. Other than that everything is fine. Since Win4lin and Quickbooks both take forever to get up and going, we just leave both running and minimize it when not in use. We don't use the payroll sevice, but I would think it would work fine since IE also works perfectly with Win4Lin. I'm hoping I can find a way to run Quickbooks straight from Wine so I will not have to even be dependant on Windows 98 from Linux. This is the only app that keeps us from being entirely Windows free.

GTK-Gnutella installs without quarrel. It does the same thing, only not as pretty... egorgry, could you go into this java path business? I remember when I first started using Linux over three years ago, I almost committed supuku trying to get java in my path so I could install StarOffice. I have stayed away from this java path business ever since. After much therapy and many long nights drinking scotch and playing Team Fortress, I think I might want to learn now. Please don't be surprised though if I run out of the room screaming...

I wish I could help you on the address problem, but I'm afraid I can'tat the moment. I'll look into it for you though. On the MS to OO problem, this isn't a problem at all. OO will open MS .doc and .rtf files. OO is also able to save in those formats. I have my folks save all documents in rich text format, the Rosetta Stone as it were of all word processors. Since it seems I must daily remind my people of this, you may want to share it with your folks as well.... No word processor is going to always open and display a file exactly the way it appeared after it was created by a different word processor. A file created in MS is going to be a little off when opened in OO and vice versa.

Hi Jmax3 and welcome! I just downloaded the four FC3 ISOs today myself. I'll burn them and install sometime tomorrow. Thanks for the report!

As with most distros, Mepis prefers to be supported financially, though they offer versions a little less than current for download at no charge.

Out of the three, I've not used Core three yet. Do you have a copy of Partition Magic? If Core three, it would be better to use it to set up your partitions. I've not installed either Mepis or Ubuntu in a dual boot scenario, but I understand Ubuntu is really good with dual boots. Mepis is very straight ahead and understandable though I haven't set it up in a dual boot either. All will be user friendly to install. Ubuntu uses Gnome desktop environment and is clean and unencumbered by a bunch of needless and duplicated apps. Mepis by default gives you KDE desktop environment, though other DEs are easy to configure with apt-get. Fedora three, (I would think), will be a lot like Core two but with refinements. Core one and two were excellent in my estimation, and Core three should please as well. Of potential interest, (and I know there will be Debian based distro users who may disagree) I think Fedora has a slight edge with utilities that are more user friendly for the new Linux user. You'll get plenty of easy to understand and configure utilities with Fedora that will make hardware and preference configuration a breeze. The good thing about Linux is, you try one out for a while, then the other two, and settle on the one that is most to your liking! I would be hard pressed to recommend any one over the other. All are good choices.

Even Windows doesn't store drivers for every monitor configuration. Does Mandrake still use XFdrake in 10.1? From the command line as root go: XFdrake [enter] And see if the Mandrake configuration tool comes up. If it does, go into the monitor section and try a monitor that is as close to yours. Sometimes this works or at least gives you something to look at as a starting point. In such cases you may need to configure your monitor "by hand." which is not quite as difficult as it may sound. Do you have the manual on either of these monitors? If not, find out the vertical and horizontal rates on them so we can edit the necessary configuration files. By the way, what vid card are you using?

Hi ReFoRMaT, Just minutes ago, I was watching a DVD on my newly operational Suse 9.1 mplayer installation. Here's how to do it.

Originally posted by pr-man: Quote: hehe also just to make you jealous I picked up that lappy in mint condition for just $500 shipped, I couldnt believe my luck You're right, I am jealous! Wow!

Hi pr-man, At this point, I wouldn't even think of installing Linux to your hard drive. Try one of the many Linux Live CDs to begin with. This is a complete Linux operating system which runs entirely from the CD and will have no effect on your Hard Drive or Windows. This way you can check out Linux without all the pressures of partitioning and such. Of the many Live-CDs I've used, I like the Mepis live CD and the new Ubuntu. After downloading the ISO file, burn the image to CD. Set your bios to boot CDrom before HD, insert the live CD and reboot!

pr-man, I just noticed the number of posts you have! You're from next door at NTCompatible? Given that, I'm sure my detailed directions for burning and booting were completely unnecessary! Sorry...

Hi pr-man and welcome! At this point, I wouldn't even think of installing Linux to your hard drive. Try one of the many Linux Live CDs to begin with. This is a complete Linux operating system which runs entirely from the CD and will have no effect on your Hard Drive or Windows. This way you can check out Linux without all the pressures of partitioning and such. Of the many Live-CDs I've used, I like the Mepis live CD and the new Ubuntu. Download the ISO file and burn the image to a cd. Then go in to "setup" that is your bios, and change the boot order to boot from cdrom before Hard drive. Then insert the live cd and reboot! Let us know how you come out or if you need further help...

Core 3 (non test version) will be out soon. We get more inquiries about how to get ATI cards working than any other I believe. It has been my experience that ATI, although they make great hardware for Windows, is far less Linux friendly than Nvidia. Are you getting any error messages at all? Anything about not finding a screen? What is the make and model of your monitor? At any point, are you getting a command prompt? If so, become root by going: su [enter] Then it will ask for password. Enter that and press enter. Then go: system-config-display [enter] Look for and choose your video card and monitor in the lists provided. Let us know...

SuSe 9.1 uses Totem. I've not tried them under SuSe yet, but Mplayer and Xine are pretty much standard. I believe Xine is already in SuSe 9.1 as well. Try them and see if they will work for you. If not, there may be copywrite protections that you may need to work around.

...suddenly, and without warning, danleff and Dapper Dan discover they are actually freshmen moderators...

Hi Firecat12135 and welcome We need to know what distro you're running before we can proceed.

I guess the scotch was working better last night than I had anticipated! Riva IS an Nvidia! Yep, I think you're right danleff, it doesn't sound like a video card problem at all. Again, if you have a prompt, do: system-config-display, [enter] and try to find your monitor in the list provided. If you can't find the exact make and model, try to go with something as close as you can. Last night I configured an "EMC 772¨ whatever the heck that is... It was not in the RH 9 list so I had to configure it, "by hand." You may have to do the same if your monitor is not listed which actually is not as difficult as it sounds. What make and model is your monitor?

Does FC2 give the opportunity to create a boot disk as a separate operation from installing grub? Seems like we had someone else recently who mentioned he wasn't given a chance to create a boot disk in FC2. I could be imagining all this...