Installing Mandrak Today

[Undying Wizard NHD]

ok I have disc 1 of mandrak 9.1 & am downloading disc 2

do I need all 3 disc's ? or just disc 1 or disc 1&2

wht is on all 3 disc ?

I remember somthing like disc 3 is just tool and wht not




also wht packages should I use ? Im a gamer ,a movie watcher,& a P2P user. I dont write programs but am getin into linux for such things, I wanna learn oh to make a OS work to my like's



been thinking about linux for awile now and have asked you peps about whats Linux to use, I have choose Mandrak after reading alot of things about redhat & Mandrak.



yes Im a NooB to Linux and have no clue wht Im getin myself into.. since I just got a new 80gb HD plus my 40 GB HD I thought wht the hell I'll just dual boot have WinXP on 1 drive and Mandrak on the other.


another thing lets say Im running Mandrak can I get to my files tht are on my winblows drive ?



thanks all hope to hear from ya all soon cause I just want to get this done with



also my system specs incase anyone knows of problems I may run into with my hardware and Linux


Asus P4S8X-X ----- motherboard with 8x AGP, 533 fsb
P4 2.4 GHZ 533 fsb-------- duh CPU ? LoL
A-Open 256 mb ddr pc2700----- memory card
Geforce 2 mx 400 64 mb Tv out--------- yes I know a old video card tht shouldent be on this badass system but Im getin a Geforce Fx 5600 ultra 256 mb soon.

guess my dvd-rom and my cd-rw dont need to be mentioned cause if they dont work then dwon with linux.



ohh and my sound in built into my mobo , its 5.1 soundmax



and both HDD's are maxtor the 40(ata 100) gb is 5400 rpm, and the 80gb(ata 133) is maxtors 7200 rpm ultra



Also Im geting the i586 version of Mandrak is this correct for my system?

[fernandez]

Originally posted by Undying WIzard NHD
ok I have disc 1 of mandrak 9.1 & am downloading disc 2
do I need all 3 disc's ? or just disc 1 or disc 1&2

wht is on all 3 disc ?

I remember somthing like disc 3 is just tool and wht not


I'm not sure if you need disc 3, I'm not running Mandrake, hopefully someone else will be able to answer this question.


Originally posted by Undying WIzard NHD

also wht packages should I use ? Im a gamer ,a movie watcher,& a P2P user. I dont write programs but am getin into linux for such things, I wanna learn oh to make a OS work to my like's


I believe Xine is default movie player in Mandrake, however, I prefer mplayer
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design6/dload.html
For p2p there are many solutions including xMule, limewire, gift etc.

I'd say that Linux isn't the ideal machine for gaming. Some games can be run via winex or wine or some Linux native games such as Tux racer is usually included in the distro.



Originally posted by Undying WIzard NHD

another thing lets say Im running Mandrak can I get to my files tht are on my winblows drive ?


Some distros automatically add this support during installation. Your C drive will usually be designated as /dev/hda1. If it is not automatically recognized, you can always edit the "fstab" file.

Originally posted by Undying WIzard NHD

also my system specs incase anyone knows of problems I may run into with my hardware and Linux



As for hardware, I don't know much about compatability. I hope someone else is better informed about specs than I am.

[isamoor]

I already gave some advice for using mandrake for a newbie over in this thread, I think it'll all hold true for you as well:

http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13434

Do read all my comments there. I suggest sticking to the grouped packages for now. And the PLF for all of your P2P needs.

Your hardware looks fine. If you already had the Geforce 4 in, you might of had to install the nvidia drivers before you could do anything (not hard, but not easy at all for a complete newbie). The GF2 wlll be fine with the included drivers, but if you want to game you'll have to get the official ones (don't try this for a little while at least).

The Mandrake (notice the spelling :) ) installer should help you lay out your partitions.

As I've said before, Mandrake is a great place to play. Just try out all the apps. At the same time, remember that Mandrake isn't the only flavor of linux out there for when you get sick at some of it's quirks.

Oh, and you need the third cd for a few apps starting in 9.1.

Later,

Isamoor

[isamoor]

Ah yes, Mandrake is nice enough to automatically mount your windows drives for you. It really does make a great first distro.

Do note that if you have a ntfs formatted windows drive you will only be able to resize it and read it, not write to it.

And all those P2P apps he listed are great. I might put gtk-gnutella over limewire since you can easily get gtkg from the PLF and it's not so easy to get java going for a n00b.

The PLF also put together a great mplayer package to meet all your multimedia needs.

Here's their official site:

http://plf.zarb.org/

and here's an explaination on how to add them to urpmi (Mandrakes package manager) after you add the plf, their packages will show up in your nice Graphical rpmdrake in the mandrake control center.

http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/


Hey hey hey, it's your lucky day. Look, a newbie's intro to Mandrake linux:

http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/basics/index.html

Later,

Isamoor

[keyshawn]

hey,
Mandrake already comes with almost all programs you need [and you get to select them @ install time]
you do need a p2p client though, d\l separately, i recommend gtk-gnutella.

disk three, which is less than d's 1 and 2 [at 700 mb's], has some documentation [usually non-english stuff] plus some other programs\source codes, etc....

Nothing really important, i'd just scope the 3rd cd once you get used 2 linux.

good luck !

keyshawn
mandrake 9.1\ windows me user

[Undying Wizard NHD]

thanks for the replys


when I tryed to install Mandrake I keep geting error messages saying it cant install a package if I just ignore it then it gets another error saying it cant install another package

I was just thinking maybe I had to put in cd2 ? or would it tell me when I need cd2 ?


well Im ganna give it another try in awile lol


anyone know wht Im doin wrong please tell me

[keyshawn]

hey,
When installing linux, as a newb, you'd probably be best off installing almost everything, to get a feel for what there is out there.
Also, many packages rely upon each other to be installed, so you must install one if you want the other. You have to install all the programs that allow another program to work . For me, though, it automatically chose all the dependent programs for the other program that you chose.

for help besides here,
visit www.justlinux.com
and linuxmandrake.com

welcome,
keyshawn

PS - CD 2 isn't used later on in the install process [after where you are stuck at]

[isamoor]

Could be a couple things. A corrupt cd is a possibility. Also, did you make sure you had enough room on the partition you were trying to isntall to.

Installs are sometime touchy, I'd just give it another shot.

Later,

Isamoor

[Undying Wizard NHD]

I broke it down to it must be a corrupt cd, 4 times trying to install
I set the drive up to give mandrake 40 gb out of 80gb


hope it wasent a probrem downloading it tht made it corrupt
winrar opens the iso just fine without saying its corrupt I burned at 24x , did have problems tryin to burn cd2 at 24x so I burned at 12x , Im ganna burn cd 1 at 12x see what happens

[isamoor]

MD5 sums are your friend.

Did you download and check the iso's against their md5 sums? There are some real simple windows apps to compute md5 sums if you want to make sure.

Iso's will open and burn even if they are corrupt.

Later,

Isamoor

[Undying Wizard NHD]

well I reburned cd1 at 12x works great now installed without a problem


but........ lol when it asked me to setup a password I choose no password , then it asked me to make a user name and password anyways, I left it blank and clicked next , well when I start Mandrake it ask for a login name, I typed root, then it says its not safe to login as root,


now what ?

[Undying Wizard NHD]

well Im typing this message using Mandrake, works great Ummm now all I need is a firewall, and also wht do I need to do so info sent on a website is encrypted ?



thanks all for the help, like the gui I tryed Mandrake a couple years ago and didnt like the gui back then

[isamoor]

Running as root is bad. I'm not gonna take the time to explain it, but you can read about it elsewhere. If you haven't, do set up a user in the mandrake control center and use that user for logging on.

The "gui" is kde 3.1.x I'm sure. Kde has rocker since 3.1 in my opinion. It has some great stuff.


The firewall is also in the control center (the mandrake one, not the kde one)

I don't understand what encryption you want. Do you want to hide behind a proxy or do you want to log onto bank sites?

Later,

Isamoor

[Undying Wizard NHD]

never mind about the encrption thing I got thatworked out, Im not running as root everything is just fine now.





thanks all for the help Linux is fuckin cool so far, even goes faster on the net

[isamoor]

Glad to see someone else having fun with linux.

Don't forget for all your p2p needs you can go check out the PLF, I linked to them in that other thread I mentioned earlier.


And may I say I'm a little jealous. It's damn hard to get Mandrake's window theme onto any other linux distro, so I've always wanted to look like your desktop, but it's not worth the trouble.

Later,

Isamoor

[ccc1005]

I remebred that I needed it for the source rpm I think (to install a wireless networking driver). So you may or may not need it.

[Undying Wizard NHD]

anyone know anything about Xfree ?
does mandrake 9.1 need it to install geforce drivers ?

[DIMA2001]

no, NVidia doesnt allow includeing drivers into an OS
you will have to get them from nvidia.com
the minimum included drivers in mdk are enough for watching videos, but too weak for gaming.

[Undying Wizard NHD]

?


yeah I got the drivers, but how do I instal them ? says I need Xfree for linux


seems like I already have xfree tht came with mandrake , but cant seem to instal drivers.



lol linux nOOb = me

[isamoor]

If you have anything other than just text on your screen, you already have XFree. So yes, you have all that.

Installing the drivers isn't too bad, but it's not super easy for a newbie. :)

Oops, gonna have to make this short, I've got manual lobor waiting for me. Did you go check those mandrake sites I listed before to see if help was there?


If not, you need to get comfortable on the command line first. Why don't you open up a terminal in X and play around with the su command (it allows you to "become" root while you're a user. This is not a bad thing) and you need to be able to edit files from a terminal. So you're gonna need to either understand vi , or I recommend installing nano through rpmdrake in your control center.

I'll give details another time, but make sure you understand and can use those commands above.

Later,

Isamoor

[isamoor]

And here's some good threads on actually doing the install.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71711

Just play around on there till you think you got it.

Later,

Isamoor