Some major help for the newby!
 

Hello! ok, so i'm having this issue trying to get the internet to work (i' duel boot , with windows xp, thats how im typing this!) with Mandrake 10.0. I'm using Mandrake 10.0. I have both onboard lan and onboard sound. I got the sound to work. I am using an Nvidea Nforce motherboard if that means anything.....


aalso another question:

how do i install stuff that isn't rpm? Like wine or winex for example, i installed both of those with the rpm by double clicking on them, but i don't know how to get the programs to actually run... I don't understand how i install windows applications with wine or winex. Like all i have done was just install the rpm application....


Thanks! :)


W.

to run an app, find its path, try "which filename" is should return the path ie. "/usr/local/mozilla" the command to run the program is " ./" so...you could do it like "/usr/local/./mozilla" or cd /usr/local return then ./mozilla

Still
 

What do you mean?

my first question was how to get the internet to work. my second was is "how do i compile programs. like wine for instance. Do i go into "run command" to complie or do i use like K-edit?

still lost :(

To run a program, you have to go to the directory that it gets installed to and type the name of the command, similar to how you would run dos files. So if the program is installed in your home directory, and your username is mike, and the program is called mp3player, then you would open a terminal and type:

cd /home/mike
mp3player

And that would run the file. Some programs are nice in linux and add themselves straight to the window manager menu, and others don't. As for how to add those that don't, I'm not really sure myself because I've just started playing with Linux a lot and I haven't really installed any software.

When you are running files, Linux is case-sensitive, meaning that if the file is called MP3Player, and you type "mp3player" then nothing is going to happen.

Another command you will want to know for playing in the command line interface is "ls". This is the linux equivalent of "dir", and it has many possible options.

One other useful command is "man", for instance, type:

man ls

This will bring up the Linux manual system, which is basically the Linux help files. This will explain to you what the commands do, and, although it doesn't have many examples of using commands, usually, it does tell you what options are available and such. Hope this helps some.

thanks.!! what about my network issue?

Do you have the drivers for your network card loaded? Do /sbin/ifconfig -a and if there's an entry for eth0, you're set. All you need to do is enter your IP address, subnet mask, and gateway, plus add your DNS server(s) to /etc/resolv.conf, and you should be browsing the net (if you use DHCP, DHCP should set that configuration data all up for you).

If there's no eth0 entry, you probably need to load the driver. Try 'modprobe nvnet' as root. If that module isn't found, you'll need to grab the Ethernet driver from NVidia's Web site. I think the generic NVidia net driver is in recent kernels, though. I don't have any NVidia hardware myself, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong on this.

ok, back to the installing part... you guys didn't tell me where i enter the information... do i use a program like k edit or do i click on my little star icon in the bottom left and click on "run command"?

still lost

type the commands in the terminal :)