Misc. issues of a newbie
 

Hi,

Yesterday I finally got to install Mandrake Linux 8.2 in a dual boot with Windows XP Professional.

Yet, so far I've been unable to get the thing to go online. I have a SpeedTouch USB ADSL modem, and although it's supposed to be supported by Mandrake, it's listed as Unknown in the device manager (or whatever it's called). I think that's the starting culprit, since I've been trying to configure the connection settings unsuccesfully.

Do I need to install something else? If so, how?

On other issues, I removed the bar that shows which applications (or windows) are opened from the GNOME panel. How do I get it back? sigh... I sound like the users who move their Windows taskbar to another side of the screen and panic when they can't find it.

Also, is GNOME supposed to be so damn slow? It takes too long to open *anything*, and sometimes I even wonder if I in fact opened something. Is there maybe something wrong with my installation? I don't think it's the hardware since Windows runs very smoothly.

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Ivan V.
:newbie:

I tried to check it out for you and found this:

<http://www.gnome.org/learn/users-gui...sheet/note.png> Note:

You must always have at least one panel on your desktop. If you have only one panel on your desktop, you can not delete that panel.

Maybe your' panel is hidden somewhere? scroll through these pages... they should be a pretty good manual.

If you are looking for a faster system while in X, check out the windowmanager called "fluxbox" it is a bare-bones desktop and doesn't use much memory.

Hi

To recover the panel try deleting the .gnome directory in your home directory..

it sounds like you have removed the taskbar applet, not the panel

just right click and choose the panel submenu, then in applets look for the taskbar applet. I am not being specific because I am not on that wm now.

You should find it without too much problem