Hi

I decided to switch from fedora / mandrake to slack because i felt i wasn't getting the most in terms of speed, and actual linux learning done.

Now - i've installed slack 10.0, compiled a kernel 2.6.7 since i was using it with fedora before and it worked fine, and i can't seem to get a few pieces of hardware running.

Problem #1:
Ive installed NVIDIA drivers, and i've changed the xorg.conf file to make it:
Driver "nvidia"

NOW every time i type startx it just freezes, i dont see anything and nothing responds.

Problem #2:
My sound just wont work. When i switch the Driver back to "vesa" just to get into X, i get a message at the beginning saying something along the lines of "could not access /dev/dsp file does not exist" or something to that effect.

Problem #3:
My network. What should go where? host name? domain name? dhcp??!! all i know is that my identd on mirc is somethingsomething@nsw.bigpond.net.au and my IP is assigned by the bigpond server. How does that translate into what i type into netconfig?

any help would be greatly appreciated -- will be able to reply about 5 or 6 hours from when i type this msg. Thanks

For the 2° problem, in root console you must type:

chmod 666 /dev/dsp*
chmod 666 /dev/mixer*

For default in Slackware only root can access to audio device, you don't have permissions.

on prob #1.......did you uncomment the ........Load GLX???

for the sound device drivers:
none of those /dev/ files existed at all! is this a problem with my compilation of the 2.6.7 kernel or something else altogether?

for the video:
doesn't seem to work with either the GLX commented OR uncommented.

Lets start with one problem at a time, first your graphics. What version of Nvidia drivers have you installed? Can you post your xorg.conf file so we can look for errors.
Sound, what happens when you run alsaconf from the console?
Network, run the command netconfig, either from a console, or in a root window and fill in the blanks
Finally, what happens to all of the above problems if you use the kernel that slack comes with. It could be something to do with your self complied kernel.

Don't know why but 2.6 kernels gave me sound/video problems too.

Switched to a 2.4 and got my Nvidia TNT2 going great and my sounds works too.

Run "alsaconf" from console and let the wizard try and find your sound for you. Then changes permissions as someone else here stated.

to summarize
1) follow the directions, besides changing the driver to nvidia, you also need to make sure the load glx line is present and uncommented and you need to comment out or delete the line for load dri
2) run alsaconf to see if it will automagically set up sound. Pat used to recommend that instead of changing perms that you add your user to the appropriate group which used to be sys, now i believe you add your user to audio
3) the irc server will probably pick up your actual isp info, not what you put in netconfig. they are not big on spoofed addresses or identity. what you put in netconfig is pretty much up to you. i usually put what i want in the machine name but use my actual isp info in the domain name.