The first Linux distro I tried to install was Mandrake 6.0, I was coming from a Windows-exclusive
background. The hardest part of the install was getting the drive formatted to accept Linux at all.
I kept formatting my hard drive with Seagates “Disk Wizard” to empty the drive, and then I would
continually get “not enough room on disk” errors when trying to install the workstation version.
Even on a 4GB hard drive!
The trick I found is that you must low level format to remove any traces of a FAT table, or, to
format it with “Disk Druid” (Linux’s Fdisk-type thingy, which I still don’t understand).
After figuring that out, Mandrake was a simple install. The workstation install does all the
partitioning and installs all the components you need to run as a client or server, so it’s easy for
the first-timer.
Mandrake did a “plug and play” for the NIC (A Digital brand 10/100 card) and the video chip
(A Cirrus Logic chip) and when setting up the display they have a very, very large list of monitors
so the chances of finding your are pretty good, if not, it will ask questions about your monitor
that you just can’t find of the label, so you will probably end up at a 480×640 mode and 256 color.
Once in the Linux GUI (I used KDE), installing the modem was simple, just go to the start menu and in the internet sub-menu is “Kppp”.
Right there is the modem setup, just tell it which port your on (0-3 for ports 1-4), and whether an
internal or extrenal modem (external is ttyS, I forget internal, as, I never use them) for example, if
you have an external modem on COM2, choose ttyS1 from the dropdown menu, COM1 is ttyS0.
Setting up sound was a little more cryptic. You start by entering the Linux Terminal window (the linux
equivilent of the “DOS Box”) and enter “sndconfig” and it prompt you thru the address settings for the card,
and after you choose one, it plays a sound and asks you if you heard it, if not, then try the next
setting and try again. From the little experience I have with installing a dozen or so different cards,
if the first setting or two doesn’t work, your card probably won’t work in Linux, and for sure, authentic
SoundBlaster cards are the best to use, I have never had one fail yet.
As a whole, my Linux Mandrake experience has been a good one, I have learned a lot, and had fun learning
a new OS that is actually quite powerful, and very stable. If you are familiar with Windows and DOS,
installing the Mandrake distro of Linux should be pretty staight forward, and operating the OS in KDE
should be a breeze. It runs quicker than Windows on smaller machines (tho Mandrake does require a Pentium
or better processor) and many features and included apps are very familiar, it comes with and FTP client that
is identical to WS FTP and also has it’s own version of WinAmp for MP3 users. The boxed set of Mandrake
even comes with Star Office which is so similar to Microshaft Office it is easy to start using right away.
Keep in mind, however, Star Office is a seperate install, and a really peculiar one at that. It requires
that you install all the setup files from the CD to the harddrive loged in as the admin, then logged
in as a user, you install the app to that users directories (or, at least that is how I got it to work).
I am currently trying to set up my Mandrake box as the server for my Windows clients, that is proving
to be trickier than I expected, but stay tuned for future articles about my experiences and hopefully
some working knowledge of the Linux/Windows networking protocol.
