Please help me. I installed Mandriva 2007 on a Dell 533mhz. Installation went fine, but I am unable to install java, even though, I followed the java site instructions and other instructions that I have found on google. I installed flash and works fine.

I get as far as accepting the agreement but after that, it says something like file o folder not found. When I try to install righ clicking the rpm file and open with installation app, it says that the package is already installed. Definetely it is a pain working with Linux.

2.- I am unable to play CDs
3.- My external 40GB USB enclosure would not show the contents of the hard drive even though the drive gets mounted. However, regular USB pens drives work fine.

Thank you for any help that you may provide me.

Anyone out there?

Patience is "a virtue" my friend.

You may not need to install Java from the Sun site. If you have got your package manager configured with some decent repositories (see easy urpmi for instructions on how to do that perhaps ?) then there should be a java package available in the package manager (not sure what the section is called now it used to be "RPMDrake+").

It may be listed as just java 1.4.3 or JRE 1.4.3 (the version number I quote may be out of date - I don't know) or even as Blackdown Java or Blackdown JRE but theres usually one available.

as for playing CD's, you would have to check whichever application you use is correctly configured - for example, Amarok. It's often set to a default of something like /dev/cdrom - which might have been linked during install, but if you system is set up so that the CD device is on one of the IDE channels then it may need to be pointing toward /dev/hdb (presuming that /dev/hda is your main hard drive). I'm sure that you can see that there are a couple of possilble variables.

Can't say about the external HDD because mine is both USB and ethernet (it's connected via ethernet) and I can't access the damned thing either. I don't know how Mandriva are doing things now, but in the *buntus theres often a linked "thing" in konqueror that says "storage devices" and it's found there.

finally you're mistaken in thinking that linux is a pain. You probably access a linux based web server nearly every time you're online (google, amazon, etc etc). It's not so much that it's particularly difficult, but it is very different in how "the guts" of it work compared to windows.

Good luck on your mission agent Jose Vargas

regards

John

PCLinuxOS is the one for me. Wow! I'm typing this using PCLinuxOS. I did not have to install nothing. My CDs play just fine, I can access the sites that require JAVA and looks much better than Mandriva 2007, Kubuntu or Fedora. Well, I hope I don't have to try the hundreds of distros available to have fun with Linux. Next thing is to learn all the equivalents to Windows. Like how to backup, install and remove programs and drivers. PCLinuxOS looks good.

PCLinuxOS is the one John!

Erm it's based on mandrake/mandriva (which are the same they just renamed to mandriva after they bought out the connectiva distro)

I've not actually tried that incarnation though, but there do seem to be very good things said about it.

Judging by the fact that "texstar", who used to do some really excellent third party art work for mandrake, but I believe he moved over to PCLinuxOS when it was just starting out - I'd think it was probably very good.

I'd also say, that if PC's don't make you nervous, then have a look at sidux. It's based on Debian SID (aka unstable) which is considered to be the scariest version to try, but, it's been made about as user friendly as possible.

I'm no expert (despite poking my nose into the linux world for over 5 years now) and I can use it.

Or look at sabayon - which is based on gentoo.

Both use different package managers to PCLinuxOS or Mandriva (or SuSE and any other "RPM" based distros). Anything debian based will use "apt" for packages and Sabayon uses "portage", both vastly superior (IMO of course) to RPM - I'd never go back to RPM now, not unless they did some major work on it to remove all the "dependency" problems that it can sometimes suffer.

But in any case, I wish you much success Jose Vargas, with whatever you use. I'm guessing that learning the "windowsesque" stuff isn't gonna be that hard. Installing is pretty straight forward in most cases (erm, I'd get used to your package manager first and don't try rpm's that aren't designed for your system - using fedora ones or SuSE ones etc can lead you into just as deep a "dependency hell" as installing from source/tar.gz packages can).

If your kit is reasonably up to date, then hell, get some eye candy as well. Beryl will piss all over the likes of Vista and OSX with a bit of configuration. Just google for Beryl screen shots, you'll see what I mean

Welcome to "the dark side"

regards

John