Hello. I am a total newbie to linux, I bought SuSE 7.1 Pro practically on impulse yesterday (it was on offer). Before I start with the questions, I would like to give a quick bit of history so that ye knowledgable people know what level to aim at.

1. I started programming in BASIC when I was 5ish on a ZX Spectrum. I am currently 18.
2. I moved to RISC OS (www.riscos.com for anyone that doesn't know) when around 10, learning ARM assembly code and C.
3. Then when I was 14, with Acorn even more down the drain than usual, I moved to PC, and got Windoze 95, later moving to 98 and now ME. I have been programming using MSVC++6 (MFC and Win32 SDK) since then.
4. I've never written a decent program. Only really small programs for my own use. But I do know a bit from a byte.
5. I'm also very interested in music & sound - more on that later.

My current machine is:

PIII 866 / 133 FSB
512 MB RAM
Asus P3V4X
IDE Channel 1: DiamondMax 60GB HD Master, DiamondMax 40GB HD Slave
IDE Channel 2: Pioneer 16x DVD
Riva TNT2 (Diamond V770)
Adaptec AHA-somethingorother SCSI card connected to Travan NS and Yamaha 16x CD writer
ATI TV Wonder
SB Live
Yamaha DS2416 (professional sound card)
Back-UPS Pro 650 (sorry, you can't have it)

This machine is used for just about everything that goes on in my house - which includes TV music production which is my family's business.

And here come the questions. Please feel free to shout abuse at me if the answers are in big letters in some HOWTO or FAQ.

1. Desktop: Is KDE2 OK? I know there's probably a lot of disagreement about the "best", but is it worth looking for another?

2. I spent a long time trying to get the SB Live to work. Eventually I did by telling the BIOS that I had a "non PNP OS" - without that it kept complaining that the sound card wasn't accessable on IRQ 0. Is the kernel really incapable of assigning IRQs itself? (I think I'm using 2.2.18 - would changing to 2.4 help?) And actually, it's not working quite right, because whenever it starts playing a sound I get some strange little clicks for a second (after that it's fine).

3. I didn't expect the DS2416 to work, nor was I suprised. But are there any drivers around for it?

4. ATI TV Wonder doesn't seem to work with bttv. Are there some drivers for it?

5. Is there anything on a par with Cubase VST/32 or Nuendo in terms of capabilities available for Linux? I suspect not, but I would love to be suprised.

6. Is there any way of importing my ICQ database into kicq?

7. Please could someone explain the filing structure. I have worked out the general way it structures devices, but what are directories like "etc" and "lost + found" for exactly? Where should executables go? Just general pointing to a shortish user-friendly document would be great here, there must be some around. All the things I've found so far are either too simplistic or too complicated.

8. Linux is installed in a 10 gig area in the extended partition of my 40gig drive. Windows boots off the 60 gig drive. I'm currently using LILO on a boot floppy - if I install it in the boot sector of the hard drive, is it likely to screw anything up in Windows? It's essential that I maintain a healthy ME installation, because it's used for critical work almost every day. In addition, we use Sibelius which has the shoddiest software protection in the world - defragmenting can screw it up unless you throw salt over your shoulder - which makes me suspicious of changing anything critical on the hard drive.

9. What is the easiest way into simple software development for Linux/KDE. Is there a good IDE anywhere? Is the SDK easy to learn?

10. Are there any must-have utilities/applications I ought to know about?

11. Talking of which, can anyone recommend a good gnutella client? I've been using Windows Gnotella which is about as stable as a house of cards.

I'm sure there were other things I meant to say, but I've forgotten them. I do apologise for annoying anyone if the answers to any or all of these questions are obvious. But then this _is_ a forum for newbies

TIA

- Carrot
The latest warrior in the fight against cheese.

[Edited by Carrot on 04-07-2001 at 03:28 PM]

3. Check http://www.opensound.com or http://www.alsa-project.org

7. Try reading at http://www.linuxdoc.org
For the general filesystem structure here are some directories and their most common use.

/boot kernel images and initial ramdisk images.
/etc most configuration files goes here, either in their own subdir or directly in /etc
/home speaks for it self
/lost+found these directories are made during format of the drive and is used to save files and filefragment found during scanning the drives for errors, like scandisk.
/bin some binaries
/sbin mostly binaries for use by the super user.
/var files that vary in size, like printspooler files.
/proc every process has it's directory here.
/dev device specifications, here are specifications for drives, hardware-ports and so on.

I have tried the BearShare client found at:
http://www.bearshare.com
and so far I have neer had any problem really. It seems that it only is available for windows only though.

Is that possible with ME?


Here is a link for item 7:

http://www.linux.com/firststep/newsi...id=60&aid=9027

Lol! Well it is just about possible if you reinstall every two weeks or so.

Thanks for all the info so far - any more replies gratefully received.