xwindows

[brewcity]

startx and Xconfigurator commands result in
bash: command not found

mandrake 7.2 old toshiba laptop that i was hoping to get linux installed for school/personal programming use

i originally thought that it may be a problem including proper directories, but i really dont know what the hell im talking about yet, little head start would help a lot. challanging is slowly becoming frustrating

[jintxo]

you probably don´t have X-Windows installed. You should mount your Mandrake Cd-ROM (the command would be something like "mount /mnt/cdrom") and then go into the directory /mnt/cdrom/Mandrake/RPMS which is where all the installation packages are located (Mandrake uses RPM which stands for RedHat Package Manager) and install the ones you need.
To install an rpm, you should use the command "rpm -Uvh name_of_rpm.i386.rpm"
The ones you are interested in are probably the ones like XFree86-XXX.i586.rpm (where XXX would be some sort of version number).

If you get a message about failed dependencies, this means that the package you are installing requires some other package to function properly; install the dependency package and then try again.

[brewcity]

thanks,
and thats for the info on rpm (for some reason i always feel more confidant when i actually know what the acronym stands for)