[SWLUG] mandrake is C**P

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 02:57:41AM -0000 or thereabouts, Alun wrote:
> Hi Guys.
> 
> Another problem, during setup of this alternate O.S> mandrake 10 I told it I
> had a wheel mouse, but this so and so programme does not recognise it at
> all.
...
> Can anyone tell me what keys I have to press to get to where I want to go so
> I can change the thing to a bog standard mouse which is the only thing this
> programme understands.

Which program are you talking about? Or do you mean the entire
operating system and all the programs on it? 

There are supposed to be keyboard shortcuts to everything in 
the installer program. Or so I was told when the installer didn't
recognise my mouse. You should find them in the online documentation
somewhere, I should think.

Failing that, I still have a file which lists the shortcuts in the 
installer. But it dates from May 2000. I don't know whether it is
still current. It is possible that it is not only wrong now but 
also dangerously wrong. I am not sure that I should send it to
the list without finding out: if it ends up in the archives and
is wrong, it might be bad :) 

> Why they boast that its the easiest for a newbee to work with is beyond me,
> SUSE never gave me this much work when I had it installed and running it
> worked no matter what mouise you told it was.

There is a big difference between "easiest to install" and "after
the install, easiest to run". There is another big difference 
between ease of install on the most utterly plain and heavily-tested
hardware and ease of install on anything else. Trust me. I am an
expert at getting "should work, but doesn't" hardware! 

I'm not entirely clear from your message what you're asking for.
Do you want a way to redo the install and this time to tell it
different settings? Or a way to sort things out without re-installing?

If the latter, are you happy at the command-line? I know how I
would go about investigating and trying to fix this, but you 
need to be happy with a text editor (not a word processor: an
editor like vim, joe, pico/nano or emacs) and a text prompt.
Just in _case_ something goes wrong... :) 

Telsa