Am I good to go for Linux?

[TheChosen0ne]

I'm considering installing MD 7.2 but as i've been downloading the iso, some questions have been wandering through my head, to begin, here's my system specs:

-AMD t-bird 700
-ASUS A7V
-SB Live Platinum w/ LiveDrive
-HP CDWriter 9100
-Diamondmax 30 gb HD
-Hercules 3d Prohet II (gf2)
-3com etherlinkIII NIC
-Logitech USB optical mouseman
-Microsoft USB Natural keyboard
-External parallel zip drive
-20 gig win98 partition(fat32), 5 gig win2k partition (fat32), and 5 gigs for linux (hopefully)

Here are my questions, feel free to answer any or all or them:
1. Are there any problems with my hardware? I read that MD 7.2 supports USB mice, but are keyboards ok? Also, I've read some stuff about nVidia problems, how is this fixed?

2. I've read some stuff bout lilo, and i heard some stuff that scared me, like people having to wipe their win partition. is there likely to be a problem as i already have win98 and 2k?

3. I read an install guide on FreeOS.com and it recommended picking ReiserFS (which i know nothing about) and GRUB instead of Lilo. What is recommended for someone who doesn't know quite what they're doing (i.e. where stuff won't get jacked up easily)

4. Last question for now, I've heard a lot about problems during installation. Does anyone have anything to say about this? also, if the installation doesn't seem to be working, how do i just wipe off what MD has tried to install and pretend like it ws never on my system?

5. Any other tips for a complete newbie?

[sincka]

#1: Might be a problem, but hey doesn't hurt to try it out.

#2: You can have triple boot http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif And no you don't have to wipe out anything.

Well I'll just answer these two questions because the others I'm not really sure about.

Anyway... I hope other ppl answer your questions too http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

Good luck

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Evil Is Good

[Tiger]

Mandrake is one of the easiest of all distro's to install.

Grub is the default bootloader in Mandrake 7.2 so you shouldn't have a problem.

To get full blown USB suport you'll need Kernel 2.4 and I wouldn't recommend trying that until you get some time under your belt.

Here's a few links that'll answer your questions hopefully.

Install NHF (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/installation/preinstall.html)
Supported Video Cards (http://www.xfree86.org/cardlist.html)
SBlive NHF (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/soundcards/sblive.html)

Last tip, get a good general book on Linux like "Running Linux" 3rd ed. By Matt Welsh. It's an O'reilly book.

Also, if you have problems after the install do a search on the BBS and see if anybody has posted a solution that fits.

Good Luck http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif



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Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.

[TheChosen0ne]

Well, good news, I'm making this post using MD 7.2. Install was flawless, everything seems to work, except a few things:

1. My SBLive card, i saw a tutorial somewhere, but i ran through it and it didn't work.

2. My Printer, Its on my parents' computer (win98) and its an hp 952c, i need to find out how to get this computer to print on it. I also can't seem to see the other computer in Konqueror

that's it for now, thanks for any help you can give me!

[Muzzafarath]

I also have a SB Live! card, I've never had any problems compiling or loading the drivers from Creative. What exactly went wrong? What errors do you get?

I don't think that printer is supported. I check out LinuxPrinting.org (http://www.linuxprinting.org) and I didn't see it listed anywhere.

[This message has been edited by Muzzafarath (edited 26 January 2001).]

[kowalsky]

#5. (totally agree with Tiger above) Mandrake 7.2 took only 20 minutes to install (extensions CD included) on a very similar machine with yours. you can grab the images from tucows.com, burn them on CDs and proceed form there. I didn't pay much attention to things I did not need for Linux (CDRW, sound card, printer, etc.) - however I was surprised to see that except for the printer all the other things were already working. In MD 7.2 both LILO and grub will boot your Linux no matter were they are on your disk and this is another good thing,
good luck,
kowalsky

[TheChosen0ne]

Well, I follow the ftp instructions and everything on the llink tiger sent me. I uncompress it, and up to that point i'm pretty sure its right. I noticed the SBLive drivers came with mandrake7.2 also, but the first time i started up there was an error about not being able to read the emu10k1 file, that its missing or in use i think, and it says something about a possible IRC conflict. After i've messed around a little, it now trys to init the driver twice (ack!) Is there a system log I can open up to look at the exact error?

[TheChosen0ne]

yay! i got it to work. it was an irq problem, i tried disabling "plus and play OS" in the bios, and now linux works fine. it was still loading 2 sound modules, but i just removed the sblive dir a made when i downloaded it, and then removed the alias sound emu10k1 from modules.conf thanks guys, stuff is working great now