I'm a linux newb, and figured it would be best to try one of the quote "harder" distro's, instead of using Mandrake that will hold my hand through the whole thing. Well I just finished installing Slackware, and man was that easy, but I can't run X. I ran xf86config, and configured everything. When i try "startx" at the command line, my screen goes black and then back to the command line giving me an error. This part of the error is what I think is behind it all:

"(WW) Radeon: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:2:0:1) found

(EE) No devices detected"

I have a Radeon 9600, and it's an AGP card. I'm guessing that X is trying to look in my PCI slots for the card. So what do I need to do/configure so that X knows my card is in an AGP slot?

This sounds like a driver problem. Have you tried the drivers from ATI?

Seeing as I only have access to the Command Line, and im a complete newb, how would I go about downloading the driver? ATI tells me how to install it, but now how to download it

You can use wget to download from the internet so the command would be

wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/fg...3.7.6.i386.rpm

This will download the driver to the directory your in.

Or you could download it in windows, and access the windows partition from linux using the mount command.

I tried the wget, but i got "Resolving www2.ati.com... Failed: Host not found"



I can't try the second option, because im using windows on a different machine than the one with Slackware on it. So why isn't it letting me download the driver?

I typed "ifconfig" and it gives an IP and Netmask for eth0, both of which are correct. "/sbin/lspci" has both my nic's. I tried pluging the cable in both nics, but it won't work with either?

I tried to put the RPM on a floppy, but it is too big. Is there any way (using Windows) to maybe convert it to a different format so that it will fit on a floppy?

You could try compressing it with zip, and unzipping it with unzip in Linux.

But there appears to be something wrong with your internet connection. Also check to see if there not already on your CD's

NaTaS, could be that you need to manually edit your XF86Config file. You'll find it under /etc/X11

If you can post it's contents here.

I got X working, I used VESA drivers instead of the Radeon ones, and I have KDE up and running. Only problem is still the internet, and sound. Could the internet problem be because of having 2 NIC's? One onboard, and one PCI one.

Sound problem: When I start up KDE, I get this

"Error while initialize sound driver:
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (no such device)"

disable the onboard one, you just need to configure your NIC, i do not know the command in slack to do that, you could google it

The sound problem probably means the system can't find your sound card. Try selecting diffrent hardware options in KDE. control Center->Sound & Multimedia->Sound System Under the Hardware Tab. Maybe your trying to use ALSA, when your kernel only supports OSS. or similar. If this doesn't work, Maybe you need to install drivers for your sound card.

There is no "hardware" tap, all I see is "aRTs", "Sound I/O", "Mixer", and "MIDI"

Under I/O, the I/O method is set to autodetect, i'll try other methods to see if they work.

But I'm having trouble finding commands for the nic. Im guessing all I would have to do is disable the onboard NIC(no clue how) and then run netconfig?

I tried "dhcpcd eth0" because it had been suggestion in other people's problems, and it worked! Now does this mean that every time I start up, I'll have to enter this in order to get online?