Okay, im a complete
though so far i kinda like this guy

Im running : And hiding,..... just realised my distro is on the left!!!

But, firstly, ive been having problems installing nVidia drivers, after looking at the notes at the top of this forum (which helped muchly) but in the funky hardware configuring applet type thnig that mandrake has, my video card isnt listed... I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200

Also, i have a DeskJet 640C, which i intend to use USB to connect to my computer. But ive heard all sorts of things flying about about usb, and not sure what to do about it. And frankly im terrified of this "re-compiling" thing you speak of mostly because i have no idea what it does!

TIA

From the mandrake control center, click on "hardware" and "printerdrake" to open a wizrd for configuring your printer. It has been awhile since I used 8.2, but my USB printer (laserjet 1200) works fine with Mandrake 9.1.

You can use yanc for configuring you nvidia driver. Download it at: http://yanc.sourceforge.net/index-en.html

Yanc is very easy and worked great for me.

Ahh, thank you

So will this configure it so that it recognises my card, and i get better framerates? the description was a bit fuzzy...

Also, another couple of things :

Is it possible to make my mouse wheel work in mozilla firebird?

Why is all small text really blurry in mozilla? is there some sort of "Clear text" type thing going on? I guess thats more of a mozilla question than a linux question...

My wheel mouse works in mozilla firebird, but I didn't do anything special within firebird. It is configured as a generic PS/2 wheel mouse. You can also change your mouse settings from the mandrake control center by opeing "mousedrake".

Fonts have traditionally been a problem with linux due to liscensing issues. The newer version of Mandrake is much better. I'm not an expert in this, but you can try a couple of things. First, if you happen to be running dual boot with windows, go to the control center and click on "system", then "drakfont". You can then automatically import your windows fonts and mozilla should recognize them. Another thing you can try is within mozilla, under preferences set the minimum font size to something larger (say 10 points). If that doesn't work, you can try deselecting the button that says "allow documents to use other fonts". Good luck

haha, okay ill try that then!

Alright, my problem, updated is thus :

i downloaded yanc which was supposed to configure my drivers, but for some reason, it says that either my drivers are too old or arnt instaled properly
I'm going for the not installed properly, but why?
To install the drivers, I did this:

telinit 1
./nvidia-linux-yadayada.run
accept, okay, yes,

At the end it says that its installed them properly, then i do this:

telinit 5

which brings me back up to kde level again.

I didnt get any errors or anything like that, so what might be wrong? What is this XFree fire ive heard about? In places it says "edit your XFree file" but doesnt actually say what to change. Im really really new i dont even know where to find this file! let alone what to change! sorry, got a bit worked up there, but stil....

ooookay....

I set my mouse to P/S2 Generic Wheel and i move the mouse and it goes all over the place... umm, help?
EDIT : ahh dont worry about that, a couple of restarts fixed that one
Ive copied across the fonts too... which seemed to work alright..

First of all, you need to edit the file named XF86Config-4 located in the directory /etc/X11. The main thing is to change the driver from "nv" to "nvidia" after you install the driver. There are some other things to check or change regarding modules as described in the nvidia documentation. Read the README from nvidia and follow carefully.

To fix the mouse, you may try pressing ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X and see if that has an effect. If not, the easiest thing to do to fix the mouse is re-run mousedrake. If you can't work in the graphical desktop, press ctrl-alt-F1 to get a login prompt. Log in as root and type "mousedrake", using the arrows, tab, and enter keys, you can change the mouse setting back to what you had before. Press ctrl-alt-F7 to return to the graphical desktop. The mouse problem may be fixed by editing XF86Config-4 also. When I saw that behavior on a system of mine, it was fixed by changing the protocol from "PS/2" to "IMPS/2" in the protocol option in the input device section of the XF86Config-4 file. Hope that works

is there any reason why my XF86Config-4 should not have nv or nvidia or anything like that in it at all? All the references ive been told to find arnt there!

Im pretty sure im not looking at the wrong file... what might have happened?

OK, try opening the control center again and setting your video card to "generic Geforce 4". This is an option in 9.1, so I hope it is there in 8.2. The video can be changed using XFdrake. It will automatically edit your config file. When you open XF86Config-4, you will see a section called "device". That is where your video card and driver are listed.

i dont have GeForce4 listed, it only goes up to 3

Is there any way i can sort of update that list..?

The only way I know how to update the cards listed in XFdrake is by upgrading to a newer version. If yanc is saying that there is no driver, then it probably isn't installed correctly. You might try re-installing. Follow the instructions carefully on the Nvidia README. I don't know what else to suggest. Good luck

For your reference, here is my working config file:

# File generated by XFdrake.

# **********************************************************************
# Refer to the XF86Config man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# **********************************************************************

Section "Files"
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Mandrake 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
FontPath "unix/:-1"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
#DontZap # disable <Crtl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
#DontZoom # disable <Crtl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse doesn't work
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx" # 3D layer
Load "dri"
Load "GLcore"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "Keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbCompat" ""
Option "XkbOptions" ""
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons"
Option "Emulate3Timeout" "50"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "Generic"
ModelName "1024x768 @ 60 Hz"
HorizSync 31.5-48.5
VertRefresh 50-70

# Sony Vaio C1(X,XS,VE,VN)?
# 1024x480 @ 85.6 Hz, 48 kHz hsync
ModeLine "1024x480" 65.00 1024 1032 1176 1344 480 488 494 563 -hsync -vsync

# TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
# 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630

# 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "Nvidia Corporation"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "DPMS"
Option "MetaModes" "1024x768@1024x768,800x600@800x600;800x600@800x600,800x600@800x600;1024x768@1024x768,800x600@1024x76 8"
Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "crt,tv"
Option "NvAGP" "3"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
Option "TwinView" "1"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-50"
Option "DigitalVibrance" "0"
Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 16

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
Screen "screen1"
EndSection

Moving to Linux - Hardware

Cool

ah, thanks. Ive updated my Distro actually and it seems to have the latest driver installed (hooray) and yanc works now..

Thanks for the help