I have a friend using this gateway running win98SE.He wants to load mandrake on it.I installed belarc advisor on his sytem to get a idea of what is inside.The monitor is a Gateway EV500 15 inch.First question during the install what do I want to choose for the graphical configuration (resolution etc.) so that when all is said and done I get a GUI and not just text.Here is what I recieved from running belarc.

Processer a Main Circut Board b
567 MHZ Intel Celeron
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
128 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: Gateway Brookings
Bus clock 66 Mhz
Bios: American megatrends Inc. 00AVIP01 07/17/2000
Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
Intel 82810E Graphics Controller
Intel 82801AA USB Universal Host Controller
AC-LINK 3D Game Audio Wave Device for voice modem
56K AC-Link Voice Modem HID-compliant consumer control device
PCI Modem Enumerator
Now this modem enumerator what exactly is this.See I'm curious if mandrake will have the drivers for the display and for the board and the cd and all that.I do know I'll have to look for modem drivers but what the hell do I want to look for to get the right one and for the sound also..See with this system even the modem is part of the motherboard..Any info that can help me is needed.I'm a newbie myself.Now I did try to do a install on this system once before and right from the start it told me that the graphical install would probally fail and to run the text install and I'm curious why would the graphical install fail.Is that a sign that mandrake doesn't come with the driver for the video.Thank You for taking the time to read this and for any help you might be able to give.

I have installed Mandrake on a computer with the Intel i810 Graphics controller and it worked fine. I don't think you'll have any problems with that.

How did you configure your graphics during the install as far as reolutions.See I'm curious if I can set this to 800x600 or if I have to go smaller.Also any idea about modem being part of the motherboard as far if there is even a driver for linux with this type of setup.

I got 1024X768 I believe. But I would start with 800x600.

The modem I'm not familiar with. If it is a standard hardware modem you'll have no problem. If it's a winmodem you'll need to go to www.linmodems.org and see if there is a driver for it.

At the end of install process you are asked to check your monitor configuration. Make sure you give correct resolution and monitor type (generic or generic flat panel, vendor etc.) Normally it would be automatically configured, but DOUBLE CHECK! If not you will burn your monitor. Check also the X server starts on boot. If not you will have only a command prompt from which you can still start X (graphical display) by typing: startx.