basicly i've decided to chuck my windows 98 CD in the bin and move to linux, the problem is i've used Unix and Red Hat before But have never installed it and am at a bit of a loss.

my first two attemps seemed to work bar the fact that after loging in as 'root' with the password i set during install i was greated with a command prompt that didn't seem to work (Just reported that command wasn't in the bash or something like that), after 2 attemps (several hours work) with the same results i gave up put win 98 back on and left it alone, now i'm sightly hindered by the fact 12 days out of 14 i'm in a different county to the computer (part of my uni corse to have 1 year in the industiral placement, and can i get on record that the only things it is teaching me is 1. 100 new reasons to hate microsoft software 2. ways to get around half the problems) and due to complex and unpleasent reasons that i wont go into the computer i want to put linux on no longer has internet access of any varity and isn't likly to until the lawyers are finished, due to this fact i was advised to buy a copy of debian 3.0 on 7 CD's which i did

now can any one suggest a site which talks you though a basic install of debian and get the KDE interface running or else think that they can ask the right questions that will point out the problem directly and tell me what i've done wrong, also some part of the installation failed (i believe it dealt with adding cd burning software) and killed the DVD drive, which was fun as that was the drive i was installing it with (first time i've ever needed to stick a pin in to the eject overide)

this is the system i want to get it running on

Processor
Athlon XP1700+ 1.47GHz SocketA CPU OEM AMD

Sound
Integrated on motherboard

Motherboard
KT3-Ultra2 SocketA Via KT333 DDR ATX Motherboard MSI MS-6380E

Memory
512Mb PC2700 184pin DDR DIMM

Hard Drive
U6 40.8Gb ATA100 IDE Hard Disk 5400rpm

Graphics Card
3D Blaster Geforce 4 MX440 64Mb DDR AGP TV Creative

Portable media
40x12x48x Int IDE CDRW Drive
16x Int IDE DVD ROM Drive
the habitual floppy drive

read the debian documentation on www.debian.org . What commands didnt work?

'ls' for 1 i can't remember any others off hand

ps thanks .org must have been the only 1 i didn't try and a yahoo search Spewed up so much sh!t that i must have missed it

okay hardware isn't one of my strong points which architectures' manual do i need to read?

an Athlon is a i686 architeture. So you will read ix86 ( in the documentation it might be i386). ( all ix86 are similar, so a i686 can run i386 compilations).

right i've skimmed the instructions and nothing jumps out as being done wrong or missed out, guess i'll have to wait untill i can get back to the PC to really test it out.
1 thing did seem odd it says you should get task-sel or dselect where as i got both

task-sel is a form of dselect. With task-sel you can choose groups of software. Wich dselect you can choose each individual program. If you follow the debian on-screen instructions you will end with task-sel before installing almost all the software you can manage in a lifetime. Before you can run KDE you will probably have to tweak your X-config due to the fact that you are working with a Nvidia-card. But since they provide good support and clear instructions this should cause no problems. You only have to make sure that you have these instructions before installing. Or use Lynx as your browser and read the instructions online

out of topic - Mark are you the GM that used to play on worldchessnetwork?

lynx saves lives, LOL

Out of Topic also - I am afraid not, i can't even win from my Psion chess program

you said i need to get new drivers for the graphics card, who should i hassel Creative the card maufacturer or Nvidia the chip maker?

and like i said no internet access within 30 miles of the computer so i'll have to do it at work and then take the drivers home 1 weekend

Since the main chip is from Nvidia my guess would be Nvidia, als because the profide good support. You can download the kernelpackages from their website. Wouldn't hurt to check Creative also. Because of the size you would need to brun them on an CD/RW.

Nvidia offers drivers for the following

linux ia32
linux ADM64
linux ia63

am i correct in assuming i need the middle 1

No, that one is for a 64 bit architecture bit, your kernel will be safe with ia32

thanks i misread that as AMD64, i hate being dyslexic

no i was right the first time it was AMD64 i mistyped it when i copied it, though i'm assuming you'd already realised that