I GOT LINUX RUNNING!

[lazygamer]

Ok some chronicles of my journey.

I was able to figure out how to use FDISK, without having any documentation to read, it just came natural. Within a few minutes I had totally gotten the hang of it.

Ok now everything would of went fine using my windows 98 startup disk, except little did I know that my cd's can't read CD-RW's from DOS(which is where the W98 stuff was).

Now I could of temporarily installed W95, got my cd copier working and copied those files to a CD-R, but my brother stopped by then and we did something else.

Rather then installing wind0ze 98, he re-installed XP. Then we get the ADSL up and running. But I encounter a personal GFP, I am very tired and it is 2AM. So we smoke some bud and I crash.

Wake up at ummm 12 noon I think. Dammit I wanna snooze more, but noooo gotta maintain my sleep schedule etc.

So it's off to the comp to r0x0r teh linux distro. With the BIOS set to boot off the Mandrake disk, im off to the installer. Ok I hit the partition part. After realizing wtf im susposed to do I start making partitions. WHOA COOL! Then C is all ready for Linux.

Then shit hits the fan. My ADSL connection is being gay. However we're gonna talk about that in a moment.

So after muddling my way through the very n00b friendly installer, it's all set up. Reboot and I get a cool and flawless boot program that told XP where the f**k to go.  
I can do Linux or I can do XP, whatever I want it works fine.(im actually talking to you from XP right now)

Now the moment of truth. It boots up Linux, and I get a nice GUI filled with all these really geeky loading and checking sentences. Holy shit, im afraid this may take even longer then XP to boot! I hope it only takes so long on the first boot up. Have to try it again. Perhaps I have a bunch of shit loading up that I don't need?

Ok so I choose Gnome as my GUI, and I must say it's perfectly fine. Why is there retards dissing Linux's GUIs? Not only do they look perfectly fine, you can customize all these really insignificant things about them, stuff you could never touch in wind0ze.

Now it's time to check out all these little tweakable things. So I find out I can customize that little BEEP noise the PC speaker makes due to keyboard related issues(cool!). I also get my mouse nice and snappy.

Im overwhelmed by piles of shit that I honestly do not know what to do with, or what it does. Ok I have my computer instinct which makes many things obvious, but you could spend hours tweaking this thing.

I give the ADSL another shot, and once again it shoots me in the nuts.

Im afraid it might be impossible for it to work with Linux. I mean it might not be, but my ADSL installation guide doesn't mention any steps or notes on Linux usage, just wind0ze and macintosh. There is also no drivers for my particular modem. I tried some of the drivers there, but to no avail. My modem is a Daewoo DW-8000P internal ADSL modem.

Ok MAYBE I could call tech support for my ISP, but then you have to spend alot of time waiting around, and I got this fear that the techies won't have no clue about Linux and stuff. Heck, I hardly understand Linux as it is.

I also notice that there's somewhat of a delay(it varies) when opening up various aspects of the configuration. Unsure about the harddrive access speeds though. I honestly expected more faster performance for something that is as optimized as Linux is. Am I doing something wrong?

Im not ready to just throw in the towel here, but... it's a big step for me.

[choasforages]

well, welcome to the DARKSIDE. well, actally for years i keep redhat on my machine even though there was no way it could get to the internet, but you might be more lucky then i. im currently looking up your adsl modem as i speak, so ill post when i find something out there

[SpeeDFreaK]

Hey lazy, are you running static IPs on your DSL, or is it dynamic? (EnterNet300, etc.)

[choasforages]

i can't seem to find anything on that model. maybe someone else would know, just don't give up on linux. i used to use a usb phoneline networking solutino for years. but i would try to get somesort of dsl router, or get an external dsl modem, and use ethernet.

[lazygamer]

Well I won't give up just because my adsl don't work. I suppose I need to play the tech support game. You keep going up tiers until you meet a person that is a computer genius. Although you have to put up with the semi-n00bs at the bottom of the barrel first.  

At least it's 100% free!

Ok I shall use this thread for all my newbie/RTFM questions. I have the philosophy that because this is Linux, I should be able to do almost anything if I have someone giving me step by step instructions into the deepest, darkest, regions of the system.  

1)My linux gives me 85hz at 800x600x16bit. That's so-so. How do I tell Linux to FORCEFULLY switch to 100hz or 120hz? I know in windows I have to use powerstrip first. I can definitly get 100hz in that resolution, not sure about 120 though.

2)In addition to 1. How do I tell Linux to ALWAYS maintain that refresh rate whenever it switches to that resolution or a lesser resolution?

3)Is it possible to give myself a better refresh rate when booting up or shutting down?

4)This thing seems to take longer then wind0ze to boot up! How do I get it loading quicker? Oh and my standard loading speeds in the GUI aren't so impressive.  

5)In addition to #4, it takes several seconds attempting to load my ADSL, then it realizes it can't and skips it. How can I tell it to NOT load anything ADSL or internet related? The lack of ADSL would probably deduct 7 seconds from the boot time.

6)What is an awesome, totally free, wind0ze/linux computer benchmarking programing?

[choasforages]

i can't seem to find anything on that model. maybe someone else would know, just don't give up on linux. i used to use a usb phoneline networking solutino for years. but i would try to get somesort of dsl router, or get an external dsl modem, and use ethernet. just remeber to have phun.

[choasforages]

well, i know that for the refresh rate, youll have to use a bit of XFREE86 magic, not that bad though, considering i have overclocked my monitor/*its only supposed to go to 1600x1200@60hertz, and i can take it all the way up to 1600x1200@70hertz. just go get manuel to your monitro withc lists the minumun and m freqs for it

then goto the XF86Config file in /etc/X11

and find a section called
section "Moniter"
or something like that

then there should be a place called
HorizSync  

fill that in with the min and max horiz sync of your monitor

like this
HorizSync   30-86

and then there should be another place right below it called

VertRefresh

set it up in the same way

like this
VertRefresh 50-150

and restart the xserver by hiting ctr-alt-backspace/*not delete*/

if it doesn't defualt to some uber high res, then open the xfree86config file up agian and goto the
place titled

Section "screens"

and all the resolutions that your monitor supports like this

Subsection "Display"
           Depth       24
                Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "320x280"
EndSubsectino


no there are probably some stuff already there but you get the idea, if you need more to work with, ill post my whole XF86Config file. also the file might be called XF86Config-4

have phun

[lazygamer]

One thing I GOT to try is Super Nintendo emulation on Linux(getting emulators right now). Not only do you have shitloads of games to play, but it's possible Linux could outperform dos(crossing my fingers) because dos was shitty to begin with(and dos already outperforms wind0ze).

[choasforages]

o, for my howto, you have to be the root user to edit that file

[lazygamer]

Ok well I called tech support, they said it should be possible to use the modem under Linux. However, they don't do Linux tech support.  

They mentioned I don't have to re-register, just renew the IP. Hmmmm.....

I think one thing im learning is that modems are the pickiest hardware out there, and I need to write down a bunch of things from windows.

[lazygamer]

Still trying, armed with a ton of information written down from XP, I still fail.

I am using Mandrake Linux 8.2. So far, there is no drivers that want to work. I haven't tried very many though, but I feel they would all say "srry d00d, no ADSL for u". What ones in Mandrake(adsl drivers) are quite compatible?

I have an internal modem, thus there is not an ethernet card. Surely it's possible to get ADSL working without needing a driver?

So far I have found two parts in Mandrake to attempt to set up my ADSL. Under that internet window, you can use the Wizard(asks for driver) or you can "configure internet connection" which doesn't ask for a driver.

So far i've collected the following information. Perhaps you guys could give me some Mandrake step by step instructions?

IP address(likely un-important, yes I know you don't post it on the net)

Subnet mask

Default

Physical Address 00-05-CB-00-28-65

DHCP server

DNS servers(Both are the same IP)

PCI Slot 5(PCI bus 0, device 17, function 0)

Memory range D9000000-D9FFFFFF

IRQ 11

ADSL Line Type T1.413

PVC_VCI 33

PVC_VPI 0

Protocol RFC 1483 Bridge LLC

Provider??? I use Telus, so would it be Telus.net for sure? How do I get a report of the address(letter address) of my IP?

Im not sure if your susposed to mention stuff like subnet mask, default gateway, DHCP server, and DNS server on the net. Im not even really familar with what these are.

[lazygamer]

quote:Hey lazy, are you running static IPs on your DSL, or is it dynamic? (EnterNet300, etc.)

I think it's static.

[choasforages]

in windows there should be an option to look at the  thing and tell if it was dhcp or not. as for trying a different linux, it is easy to do that and not have to reinstall windows also, just write down all the info in grub about booting windows, then when you install the new linux, just use that