Hey guys, I just messed up SuSE, so if i should ever have to reinstall my OS, i was thinking that i might try slackware. but I first want to know if it is friendly with the ATI Radeon 9800 pro. I know that there is really no good distro for my card, but SuSE seemed pretty nice because I was able to enter X the first time i booted up (That doesnt happen for me in Mandrake)

Yes. I have a Radeon 8500, and Slack had no problem booting into X the first time.

Installing the newer 3D accelerated FireGL drivers is a breeze too. ATI only releases them in .rpm format, but with slack you can convert it using "rpm2tgz", and then install your newly created .tgz file using installpkg *.tgz

also cd to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod and sh make.sh
then cd .. sh make_install.sh to build and install the module...

fglrxconfig

good to go

Except if you have a motherboard with and Nforce2 chipset and 2.6.2 kernal
See here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5&pagenumber=1

What motherboard do you have?

Adam

ECS K7S5A

just another question, I have been using linux for about 2 months now. Ive heared that Slackware isnt really newbie friendly. Would you think that someone like me with basic linux knowlege could use slackware efficiently?

Hi
I say go for it once ther you wont look back and the speed difference is very noticable to.

I went from mandrake to slack and havent looked back since , It seems to be more logically set up.

Cheers

slackware isnt tough... just makes you learn faster ...youll get the hang of it

I say try slackware.... if you don´t like it you can always get rid of it and install another dist!

Its not that hard to install either just make sure you know which partitions are what so you don´t put it in the wrong place!++++ There are heaps of people just dying to help you out if you have any problems (as long as you search and read before and provide all the necessary info)

I had Red Hat 9.0 for a while it was pretty easy to use. The only thing is I think the likes of Slackware is MUCH simplier when you start changing things around. Oh yeah It seems to be much faster too.

I am new to but if you have any questions just ask me and I will do my best to help you out!

Just my 2 cents as they say here!

Adam

jimdaworm i see that you run the 2.6.2 kernel. would you reccommend upgrading to someone who cant compile for beans? I was thinking of upgrading when SuSE accually worked, but then i saw a tutorial and it looked complicated so i stayed away.

If you have "basic Linux knowledge", Slackware is a total snap, in my opinion.

It's logical, organized, and pretty straightforward.

To me, a lot of other distros that try to smooth things over for the user actually complicate things MORE by trying to dumb them down.

I mean heck... that's half the problem I have with Windows.

I prefer it all to be consistent and all laid out there for the user to see how it should work, with basic, easy-to-use tools to facilitate things like software installation, configuration, and documentation.

Slackware epitomizes this.

This is what worked for me zidane2010.

I installed slackware... didn´t bother setting much up or anything, and went straight in and compiled the kernal. If you don´t have anything setup or install you have nothing to loose. Just follow the guide, don´t bother installing a newer kernal at first just use the one that is already installed with slack 9.1

There is a guide on here and it makes it pretty easy. Print out and follow this guide its wicked to start with

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=49035

Read a basic guide so you know what you need to compile into the kernal and then make everything else modules.

Modules are pretty much drivers that can be loaded when needed by the system its safe to make most things modules except really important things like the ide controling stuff.

Adam
(Correct me everyone if I got anything wrong I am pretty new too!!)

Why compile your kernel immediately?

Performance improvement?

I do it for that reason and also some stuff like my lin modem and graphics card drivers have to be installed again after I recompile the kernel.

Sorry I don´t know the exact reason I guess when you compile the new kernal modules it deletes the ones that were already there or somthing!

The reason I told him to do it before is that if he screw everything up he can just re-install and hasn´t waisted his time setting everything up.

Adam

OK, I successfully installed it. Now i have two words to say:

COMPLEATE DISASTER!!

first, i rebooted the machine. And then my BIOS checked for the boot loaded (LILO) and then on the nextline, it sais "L" and doesnt do anything. So I cant even get into windows right now. (I installed the LILO on the boot table or whatever its called, GRUB worked fine like that)

So then i put in my Rescue Disk, logged in as root, and went into /etc/X11/ and ran xf86config. Set it up MANY times to suite my hardware specs, and also the minimal REfresh rates and low resolutions and different drivers. And i cannot get X to open. It just sais a bunch of stuff then sais "Coul;d not start X, make sure it is not already running." Please help, I really want this to work, If not i will go back to SuSE

Athlon XP 1700+
ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128MB
512MB RAM

and if it makes any difference, i read this install guide http://www.bitbenderforums.com/vb22/...?postid=311808 before i installed

and is there a program in slackware that configures X kinda like SuSE's SaX?

The EXACT error I get is :
"Fatal Error: Cannat establish any listening socets - make sure an X server is not already running"

I also tried going into /usr/X11R6/bin/ and running xfree86setup and it gave me an error