I've been going through linux forums trying to get my sound to work with my sound blaster live 5.1. I've turned up all these sounds in all these configurations.. then i went into the root terminal and did something that someone posted.. now it wont go into the GUI interface.. and it just asks my username and password and then logs me into a command line prompt.

I'm a complete newb to linux, and is there anything I can do to try and get my GUI back.. by the way i'm using mandrake 10 CE .. hope that helps.

It doesn't seem like anythings messed up, it loads and it comes up to where i want to boot.. as in.. linux enterprise , linux , linux something, windows.

I pick linux enterprise as usual and it sends me to command prompt after loading all the files it usually does.

did you happen to change the /etc/inittab file.......
change it back to runlevel 4...........

to start your GUI from the command line.........

startx

Welp, i don't think i changed that.. but startx worked.. Thanks much. Now i can get back to work on trying to get my sound card to working right.
It appears to be playing.. and there is some sound coming out of it.. just not the music i play from the cd i have in my computer.

I believe i've tried all the different drivers I can, and I also went into aumix? I believe that's what it was called.. all the volume levels are up. Not really sure on what to try.

One thing.. i know in windows i have trouble using it ony becuase my speakers accept digital output.. so i have to have my sound card put out digital signals. If anyone thinks that could be part of my problem it would be great if you could show me a fix.

Also if i try to play the games that mandrake gives me.. they run choppy as all hell.. probably needing a video driver for my 9800pro or something. I'm working on sound first though

Thanks in advance for anyone that may be able to help me.
And thanks for the startx info.

I'm also having trouble with basic commands if anyone could give me a link of how-to's in linux that would rock.
I'm trying to install a flash player, and although i can get into it's directory, i can't execute the ./flashplayer-installer i'm sure i'm doing something wrong.. and i'm fairly stupid for not knowing what i'm doing wrong but don't matter how frustrated i get i wont give up and go back to windows.

Try playing your cds in xine. Most cd players on Linux boxes that I've seen just tell the CD player to play, but don't actually deal with the audio. xine does.
Chances are you've not hooked up the cable between the CD drive and the sound card, so the CD drive is playing, but the sound's not getting to the sound card. You won't have to worry about this if you use xine, though.

As for the flashplayer-installer, it's probably not been made executable. Try:
$ chmod +x flasplayer-installer
from the directory it's in, then try running it again.

You might find the following page quite useful to get to know the commands: http://www.unixguide.net/linux/linuxshortcuts.shtml

Hope that gives you something to work with.

Dave

Thank you very much. That made the flashplayer work.
Definately considering a Unix class.. because i'm liking this a lot.

Now i'm going to attempt to find Xine and use it.. hopefully that works..
And as to the command you showed me, is that a general command to make fiiles executable?
I've also noticed $ # symbols.. if it's not too much trouble what's the differences between the two?

Hi again.

chmod can change all of the permissions (read, write, execute) for files.
I don't know if you've come across this, but if you do:
$ man chmod
you'll get the manual for the chmod program. The manuals are quite long and detailed, but you can usually find what you're looking for. You can do this for most commands (e.g. man man will give you the manual for 'man').

The $ and # symbols tell you if you're logged in as root (#) or a normal user ($).

Dave

Johanthegnarler: Did you get the sound to work? If you havent, do this:
Depending on your distro (mine is gentoo) i would do these steps below:

emerge alsa
emerge alsa-utils
type alsamixer
set all levels that are changeable to 50. Then press m for all of them to unmute them. Make sure they dont say [off] or [muted]
then press esc or q and try sound again
hope this helpz

edited: sorry, it was a double post

Heh, i guess my post didn't go through..

Thanks.. although there were a few things to un-mute it didn't affect it. I'm using these digital boston acoustic speakers ba735. I had troubles getting them to work with my sound card in windows as well. Since they are digital speakers with an analog connector, not a spdif .. i couldn't use my nf7-s onboard sound.. so i had to use my soundblaster live 5.1.

Right now my main concerns are my ATI driver (i think) Becuase the chromium game is running really choppy, and i have a 9800pro.. so i figure it must be a driver need or whatnot.
I figured out how to use check.sh finally (i'm proud ) and now i tried to use the RPM and it's giving me ths : file /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 from install of fglrx-4.3.0-3.7.6 conflicts with file from package libxfree86-4.3-29mdk
kaka. I love this stuff. At least i know there is a conflict.. and its mad at package? libxfree86-4.3-29mdk

I'm going to try and tackle sound after i get this working. Then after that i want AOL instant messanger , so i can chat on linux.. then i'll never have to go back onto my windows partition unless i'm going to play games.

I know nothing about the ATI drivers. You might want to start a new thread with your video card problem, unless anyone reading knows how it's done?

As for AOL IM, 'gaim' is what you want. It's probably already installed on your system too.

Dave

This might sound retarded, but if i use GAIM will i be able to talk to AIM buddies?
Obviously the only reason why i want to go on AIM is to be like yea... i'm on linux biatch!.. to all my windows friends.

Yup. GAIM is an AIM client, and it does MSN Messenger and a whole load of other Instant Message types too, so you can talk to people on AIM and people on MSN at the same time if you want.

Dave

That's sweet, i must have chose not to install it or something while installing Mandrake 10. I've been to a few places and i see it up for other Distro's .. is it hard for someone like me to use one of those tar files and make it work right on my distro..

Is there somewhere I can download a file that is made for my distro(mandrake10ce) or do i need to do some crafty work?
I've googled it, and only found it for fedora core and redhat 7.
By the way www.google.com/linux has to be my best friend. And this site of course.

I swear by:
http://www.rpmseek.com

You can search for RPMs by name, by what files they contain, words from their descriptions.....

You'll be looking for i586 RPMs, and you can probaly use Mandrake 8 and 9 RPMs without any problem.

Dave