[Gloucs] Mandrake 8.2 on a Dell Inspiron 8100

Francis Barton gloucs at mailman.lug.org.uk
Wed Oct 30 23:23:01 2002


Hi Mike, and welcome to Linux and Gloucs LUG in particular (glad you were
able to subscribe and post in the end).

Glad you are finding Linux fun to start with - the problems do get fixed
eventually! I have found Mandrake (8.1) a pain with hardware detection, and
I prefer SuSE, but each to their own. HardDrake I have found really useless
to be frank, but others may have different experiences. It's a shame that
with such a modern system as yours, Mandrake has failed to get the hardware
working automatically. But then fixing problems in Linux is half the fun.

Your problems with the DVD drive and "floppy" may be due to an incorrect
/etc/fstab file. This can be edited by "root" - search the 'net for help
with your particular configuration or post more details to this list. I
can't really help further as I am not an expert.

As for the command line - that was something I was scared of when I first
started using Linux, but now I love it and find using a GUI to doing many
jobs just unnecessary. Gradually give it a try when you are up and running
with your system and I think you'll find it freeing, flexible and it's where
*nix really comes into it's own over Windows.

Francis

----- Original Message -----
From: " overs.worldonline.co.uk" <mike@overs.worldonline.co.uk>
To: <gloucs@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 6:41 PM
Subject: [Gloucs] Mandrake 8.2 on a Dell Inspiron 8100


> Hi Guys,
>
> I have recently installed this OS on the above computer, to dual boot with
Win XP. The installation was painless, with 25gig allocated to Windoze, and
23gig to Linux. Most of the bits were found, the card modem correctly
identified and configured, ditto sound card, but the video card, although
correctly identified, could only be made to give a display by using the
"other", "unlisted", "FBDev" route. The best it can manage is 1078x780 (or
thereabouts) at 16 bits, but I bought this machine purely because of it's
superb display capabilities (1600x1200 at32 bits). I've looked at the Nvidia
site, found the drivers, looked at the readme section and given up the
struggle!  Frankly, I have no idea what they are talking about.
>
> This is a shame, because I am totally bowled over by the whole Linux
thing, stability, speed, almost infinite user choice, freedom from the Beast
of Redmond, etc, etc, but at the age of 59, I don't think I can hack the
command line interface in Unix, I can only speak a little DOS, and not too
well either.  There are a number of other irritants that I can probably live
with, but I may as well mention that the CD Re-Writer/DVD combo produces a
start up message "cannot find dev/dvd- no such device available", when I ask
to shutdown there is a message which first of all says " CDRom open failed,
recovery thread got woken up", then, "Unmount Floppy, illegal request".
>
> This means that I then have to shut down on the off switch, which produces
the start up message "Your system seems to have shut down un-cleanly etc,
etc". No damage is done, because I always remove any CD's manually, and the
machine doesn't have a floppy disk drive, and I imagine all the system has
received the "term" signal anyway, but it's all rather untidy.  The Mandrake
control centre produces a blank screen when asked to identify the Hardware
configured, an error message appeared when I tried to configure the printer,
the Ispell appears not be available in any word processor, and so it goes
on.
>
> In case you think I'm being hard, I have to say that I am staggered and
delighted with the way it's possible to open a file on the windows partition
in Linux, or paste a document or spreadsheet written in a Linux application
back into Windows, and then be able to open it in XP, I had no idea that
this was possible, and I think a lot more people would at least try Linux if
they knew.  For the un- initiated, it's quite scary to start using a
different OS, and the possibility of transferring data from  existing files
is very re-assuring, why isn't it made more of?
>
> I know laptops are not the easiest of things to configure, once you stray
from the makers installation, but Mandrake 8.2 was touted as being very able
at hardware detection, and very user friendly, that's why I chose it, but
this brilliant operating system will never find it's way into the wider
public domain unless it can be installed with ease on a modern, well
specified machine by people like me, curious, slightly rebellious, but not
too clued up on computers!
>
> Please restore my flagging enthusiasm by telling me that another
distribution would be better (Mandrake 9,0?), or that the problems I have
mentioned are easily fixed. If I'm honest, the only thing that really
niggles me is the crappy display anyway, the rest I can live with.
>
> System
>
> Dell Inspiron 8100, built Aug 2001 (on a Friday Afternoon, I suspect!),
1.1 gHz Pentium 3, 256mB Ram, 48gB hard drive, ESS Maestro sound card,
Nvidia Geoforce Go2  video card, with 32mB on-board memory, 15.1" XG TFT
Screen, Toshiba CDRW/ DVD combo, PC Card modem, no floppy drive, extra Lion
instead.
>
> Contact
>
> mike@overs.worldonline.co.uk
> BT: 01453 822768
> Mobile: 07970 857815
>
> Kind Regards,
> Mike Overs
>
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