Well I finally got Mandrake 9 PowerPack edition installed on my system as a dual boot with Windows98. Installation went ok except neither my onboard AC97 or Phillips Thunderbird sound sets are supported so I have no sound. Otherwise the install went ok except for several programs that appear on the menu but weren't really installed!
Issues I've having so far:
1. Mandrake seems to be a half-assed collection that's not very well thought out. Or is it just me? I can't seem to do the simplest things like install programs without major difficulty. The documentation is nearly non-existant as far as DETAILS. For example WHERE am I suposed to install new programs like Opera or Seti? Where do they go? What's the correct installation procedure? I got it to work by creating an "apps" directory in my user directory then modifying the menu (like I would with Windows) but I don't think that's "correct" and it took about an hour to do that much. And do I install as root or as any user? I've never done anything with Linux before so I need to start from scratch and learn the file structure and how the system actually works - but again that's NOT documented. Where can I find this info?? All the websites I've been to seem to assume the user knows all this so they aren't helpful.
2. HOW do I stop Open Office from starting every time KDE loads? I can't find it in the services and there's no menu item for auto start that I can find. It's a KDE problem only because this doesn't happen with any other shell I use.
3. I can't make my mounted hard drive partitions appear in KDE. They are on the desktop in Gnome and accesssible but I can't use them in KDE. Why?
4. The GUI shells are VERY slow on my AMD XP 1700+ with a Geforce MX200 video board. In fact it appears to run as slow as Windows on my old 500 PIII! I even turned off all the special effects. Black Box is fast though. Is this a video driver problem?
5. The screen fonts appear ragged looking. I adjusted the fonts but it didn't help any that I can see. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.
6. The command in the book to make an mbr backup floppy does NOT work:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/fd0/mbr.bin bs=512 count=1
How do I do this? What is this line actually trying to do?
Issues I've having so far:
1. Mandrake seems to be a half-assed collection that's not very well thought out. Or is it just me? I can't seem to do the simplest things like install programs without major difficulty. The documentation is nearly non-existant as far as DETAILS. For example WHERE am I suposed to install new programs like Opera or Seti? Where do they go? What's the correct installation procedure? I got it to work by creating an "apps" directory in my user directory then modifying the menu (like I would with Windows) but I don't think that's "correct" and it took about an hour to do that much. And do I install as root or as any user? I've never done anything with Linux before so I need to start from scratch and learn the file structure and how the system actually works - but again that's NOT documented. Where can I find this info?? All the websites I've been to seem to assume the user knows all this so they aren't helpful.
2. HOW do I stop Open Office from starting every time KDE loads? I can't find it in the services and there's no menu item for auto start that I can find. It's a KDE problem only because this doesn't happen with any other shell I use.
3. I can't make my mounted hard drive partitions appear in KDE. They are on the desktop in Gnome and accesssible but I can't use them in KDE. Why?
4. The GUI shells are VERY slow on my AMD XP 1700+ with a Geforce MX200 video board. In fact it appears to run as slow as Windows on my old 500 PIII! I even turned off all the special effects. Black Box is fast though. Is this a video driver problem?
5. The screen fonts appear ragged looking. I adjusted the fonts but it didn't help any that I can see. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.
6. The command in the book to make an mbr backup floppy does NOT work:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/fd0/mbr.bin bs=512 count=1
How do I do this? What is this line actually trying to do?
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