first time install
 

Howdy. This is my first post here. I purchased Mandrake 8.1 and installed
it on a pc I built myself.

After searching around this forum a bit, I decided most of the newbies
know a million times more than I do.

What does rpm mean? I searched for the definition and couldn't find it.

Madrake is installed. Now what? I have tried to install software I got with
my monitor, graphics card, and mouse. No luck. It shows me all the files
on the disk but clicking on an icon like "auto install" does nothing. With
some disks, all I get is an error message. I can't remember the message,
something with .dir I think.

Mandrake says it cannot configure my modem and gave me a url link to
an isp website (??). Modem is a US Robotics/3Com internal 56k.

Graphics card is ECS SiS AG315T.

RPM = Redhat Package Manager

I install from a command. To install a rpm type file, you would issue a command like this:

rpm -i name-of-file.rpm

man rpm for more options and details. also search this site as its discussed and asked all the time.

Most likely you have a winmodem, try going to that site or maybe linmodems.org for details on getting that modem to work.

Some great sites for your sound, try www.opensound.com and www.alsa-project.org

-trickykid

So I'm assuming you can install rpm on any distribution of Linux?

Install from a command, eh. That leaves a lot to
my imagination.

With RedHat and probably 'Drake you can also use the gui package managers, kpackage in KDE and i think gnoRPM. Something like that for gnome ;)

There are probably a half a dozen different ways to do most anything in Linux. Heck, some folks burn CDs from command line. That's a little harsh for me when the gui stuff works as well as it does.

I thikn he meant command line. You'd open a terminal window to do that and type those commands. You'll find most of Linux is best dealt with on the command line as far as installations and configuring things. Just take the time to read up and you'll be good. As far as RPMs on ANY distro, not all. Most support the rpm formatted binaries, but others like debian use DEBs and Slackware likes to use the universal .tgz format. Mandrake itself is built on the RPM system though, so you are fine. I think it works better with RPMs than RedHat itself does.. ;)

RPMs on Debian
 

Hi,

I've been using MEPIS for a couple of weeks, and I've discovered that Debian-based systems now also have RPM support. Just go to http://packages.debian.org/rpm