I just put Slackware 8.1 on my now exMicorsoft Win2k machine. Need help with the following:
Logitech USB Optical Wheel Mouse (um.. weirdness)
Sound Blaster PCI 512 (no sound)

I'm very new to Linux so write a reply like you're talking to a 4 year old.

Okay, the mouse....
I was able to get XFree86 to run but the stupid thing won't move. My XF86Config:
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "SendCore Events" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"

The only way it works is if I modprobe the usbcore, input, hid, and mousedev, otherwise XFree86 dumps out something like "can't find the mouse." I'm currently reinstalling Slackware and making sure I check the "usb" for mouse during setup/install, doubtful this will work though.

And the sound...
I figured I wanted a mouse first. I have no idea where to start. I've poked in some help files on how to set it up. KDE returned a "dev/sound" not found thing when I got it to start with NO MOUSE. Me and my linux bible are getting to be too close of friends. Someone help!

Thanks,
Colin

To get your Soundblaster working, have you tried uncommenting the Soundblaster line in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules?

That should get sound working for root. To get sound for other users, add the user's id to the 'sys' line in /etc/group (you can see what your user id is by typing id at the prompt). That sould do the trick, but if not try chmodding /dev/dsp, /dev/mixer and /dev/audio to 666.

Can't help with the mouse, sorry. You might get some pointers from this list of online resources (courtesy of Jack Lai's site)

http://members.cox.net/laitcg/new/osoi.html

I think my notebook that uses a USB mouse is configured for the device /dev/usb/mouse0. So you might want to try changing the device.

But you should also do a search here on LQ. I know there have been alot of posts regarding USB mice. Limit the search to just the Slack forum to reduce the list and get relevant info for Slack.