[robomatic]

I am a Newbie to Linux, and I have loaded the 3 CD Mandrake 10.1 to my relatively slow PC. I have the following questions, and By The Way, if they are so simple I should not be asking them, I'd love direction to a help file or document. There is just a way of going about things I haven't gotten onto yet.

1) About a year ago I loaded 9.2, and I remember that there were 4 different 'desktops' to choose from. One was KDE, another was Gnome, and I don't remember the others. This time when I loaded 10.1, only KDE came up. Is that all there is now?

2) Somehow when I had 9.2 I was able to play mp3's. This time 10.1 loaded up and I don't seem to be able to play sounds nor find software that will play mp3's. I downloaded amarok, a music player, into my home directory, but can't seem to get it to install.

3) In the lower left is a 'star' and I have the option of selecting 'run command' Is this what is meant by the console? It doesn't give me any sense of where to find something to run.

4) I am navigating the web sufficiently via 'Konqueror'. People seem to want to install Mozilla or Firefox. I'm leary at trying one of these because then I may lose my connection to this forum.

5) I'm not sure how to navigate folders and files. I was hoping to find something similar to the MAC OS because it's now based on UNIX. But I haven't found anything near as nice (yet).

6) If I don't like a program, how do I remove it?

So you can see I have a few basic questions. Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Whiteskin]

Mandrake uses a package manager called urpmi, which if i recall correctly really just a wrapper to the RPM standard. try reading, and making sense of the urpmi manpage ( i know, it's hard, but it's worth it.)

As for kde, gnome, etc, I'm not sure as to whether or not gnome is installed by default on install, but my guesss would be no. If not, it should be installable via urpmi or whatever GUI packagmanager is installed.

Run in this case is like the run dialogue on windows. you should be looking for something called the terminal in the menu. I think it's also known as kterm.

Sound setups are the bane of all who run linux, because drivers can be hell. let us know what kind of card you have. Did you have 9.2 running well? Because, really, there's no need to do a full reinstall upgrade, as you can just upgrade your kernel and programs and have, from a 9.2 installation, a 10.1 install.

[robomatic]

Originally Posted by Whiteskin

Mandrake uses a package manager called urpmi, which if i recall correctly really just a wrapper to the RPM standard. try reading, and making sense of the urpmi manpage ( i know, it's hard, but it's worth it.)

'package manager' does this mean it's a file? an application? an install wizard? I don't see it on my desktop nor in my list of programs. urpmi manpage? Is this shorthand for urpmi manager page? Where do I find it?

Originally Posted by Whiteskin

As for kde, gnome, etc, I'm not sure as to whether or not gnome is installed by default on install, but my guesss would be no. If not, it should be installable via urpmi or whatever GUI packagmanager is installed.

When I had 9.2 running, each time I booted I had to choose a desktop system, and as i said above, there were something like 4 choices. That is completely gone now and I only see KDE.

Originally Posted by Whiteskin

Run in this case is like the run dialogue on windows. you should be looking for something called the terminal in the menu. I think it's also known as kterm.

I don't see 'terminal' or 'kterm' anywhere in the menu. I did a 'find' for kterm and turned up nothing.

Originally Posted by Whiteskin

Sound setups are the bane of all who run linux, because drivers can be hell. let us know what kind of card you have. Did you have 9.2 running well? Because, really, there's no need to do a full reinstall upgrade, as you can just upgrade your kernel and programs and have, from a 9.2 installation, a 10.1 install.

Back when I was playing with 9.2 I did turn on the sound somehow, and was able to play mp3s. There is no sound card, it comes on the motherboard as (AC97) I believe. 9.2 ran well until the mouse stopped working. I installed 10.1 on top of it and I believe it treated it as an 'upgrade'. This appeared to go smoothly with no major hangups but I'm wondering if I should do the install all over again, treating as 'from scratch'.

[lynch]

RPMDrake is the GUI front-end for urpmi.
You can find a good urpmi how-to at USALUG. There's an easy to use setup applet at this easyurpmi mirror .
Look for an icon at the bottom of the desktop that looks like a shell with a monitor behind it. Or open the menu and go to System> Terminals> Konsole.
Or use the run command menu item and type konsole.
HTH
lynch

[Whiteskin]

by the rpm man page, I meant the manual page. Most *nix systems have a manual system on disk. You can acess the manual page to any command that has one by typing inng man (command).

A scratch install may be helpful, but it is not usually necessary

[robomatic]

I've made some headway. I have sound now though I've not been able to play any mp3's. My KDE came with KMix which does not play anything. my 10.1 did not load amarok. I downloaded the install package separately but so far have not been able to get it to actually load. I go into Konsole but apparently I need to move amarok to the root directory? Which brings me to the fact that i can't finda my operating system. In other words, in my home directory i have documents, but I don't see the OS. Where is it? In my install readmes there is a list of necessary items to have on hand prior to successful install. How can I tell if I have them?

[Rashid786]

Soz to interrupt, this is slightly off topic but: You said yur soundcard was an AC97? That's a Realtek AC97, by Intel Corp. I ran Knoppix and Knoppix autodetected my card, with windows i had to fumble about for ages with a CD. I have the drivers on CD for AC97, if you really want them then I dunno maybe I could send you the drivers somehow. But then how do you go about installing the drivers? Windoze gave me hel..now imagine Linux...

BTW you said you have sound but no MP3 Playback? Mine played MP3 sufficiently.

Soz for being off topic slightly. I was thinking of turning to Mandrake or something but this puts me off...I like a little nasheed etc.

-Rashid786-

[robomatic]

I found that a lot of the sound programs that came with the 10.1 Distribution never loaded onto my HD. I've been going to Command Center and trying to do an Install, but when the prompt comes to insert an install CD, it spits it right out and repeats the request. I've been looking at some other forums and I gather there is a problem for a lot of people such as this, either the distribution itself or some interplay between the distribution programming and certain hardware. Dunno, but it's frustrating and I haven't seen any solutions yet.

[robomatic]

I'm marking this thread solved. I was able to install amarok, and although it isn't working just yet, I'm way ahead of where I was a couple days ago and any more problems in this area will generate another thread.

Rashid, I wouldn't be put off of Mandrake. The problem was that for some reason my cdrom was mounted to dev/cdrom2 but the program was looking for dev/cdrom. I don't know how this came to be, but it was easy to fix. So far I'm impressed with Mandrake Linux. However, it's the only linux I know at this time.

Good Luck!