So I've done a bit of research, alot of peoples opinions vary, but I think I'm going to make the switch to ubuntu alot of users seem to think it's much easier and friendlier, it'll take a day or so to download the torrent so i can burn iso to disc, opinions welcome!

Use either Ubuntu or Mandriva if you're looking for something hospitable to newbies.

Once you get more Linux experience you'll be back to slack. I've been using Slackware since 2002 and haven't looked back.

I've got dual monitors a 19"dell LCD and a 20.1" widescreen LCD from LG...does one of these distro's support multi-monitor support better than another?? What's the major difference between the two distro's? is one easier then the other? does one have less options/power? how would you rate the two distro's side by side?

I finaly figured out how to get into those files to edit them. When I added the resolution mode "1280x1024" to the lists, nothing happened. So I tired rebooting, still nothing. Then i went back into the file to check if it was still there. It was still edited. For some stupid reason, I thought if i deleted the space between the 'Depth 8 modes "1280x1024" ' to this 'Depth 8 modes"1280x1024" ' it might find that change, because i couldn't remember if there was a space originally or not. Well (stupid move on my part) when I logged out, and tried to log back in, I couldn't startX up again because it says no screens exsist..........is there anyway for me to edit that file while i'm still in the black and white DOS type screen? I looked through some other threads and couldn't find anything on the topic because I don't know what that screen is called (the one when it starts and askes to log in, then you can type startX to load the GUI)

Any help would be awesome! (I know I've been asking alot of questions, I really appreciate everyone's support and patience with me while i make the jump into the world of linux!

Hi,

First of all can you tell us what graphics card do you have? that would help to configure graphics properly.

Let's try to mount the disk:

You said that the disk was on /dev/sdb1 right? (let's supose that it is)

Login as root
Now you need to know the partition type of your USB drive (if it was formated using windows it will be FAT32 or NTFS), if you dont know you can try either of following commands.

or
Note that NTFS partitions are not writable in linux so you can only read data.

If it works we can talk later on how to mount this automaticaly with linux boot.




Let's try to configure the network:

Have you tried netconfig and choosed DHCP? Maybe you have more than one Ethernet card, could be?
Try to:

Search if you can see something like:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:2F:C8:CC:8C
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::211:2fff:fec8:cc8c/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2504 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2485 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1901570 (1.8 Mb) TX bytes:402135 (392.7 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x6000

Instead of eth0 it can be eth1, eth2... if you have more than one ethernet card ('lo' is the loopback, not a ethernet card).
Do you have any IP address assigned like 192.168.1.2 ?


Thank you,

That's hard to say. Slackware is not that beast that can't be handled by newbies, but you have to read a little bit more to get it working in the beginning. The way it is configured, for example its BSD-style init scripts, is IMHO much easier than in other distros I tried, but that's probably also just a matter of taste. I think Slackware is worth it, but you will need more patience to get it running first, especially if your absolutely new to Linux. Maybe there are other distros that *look* more than Windows, but Linux *is* not Windows -- Slackware is IMHO a good distro to learn this different OS.

If you dare to hazzle with it:
If you startup KDE as normal user start kmix (in Multimedia). Have you added the user to the audio group in /etc/group? You didn't write anything about it ...
Plug in the external harddisk and some seconds later call "dmesg". What's its output? Did you try to mount it as root or normal user, that makes much of a difference.

With Slackware there come pico or vim for example. I like pico better (nope, I don't want to start a flame war ). Type "pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf" change it, but be careful, sometimes it wraps long lines, if that happens go to the first end and type "del" to make it once again *one* line. Type "Ctrl+X" to exit and you'll be asked to save the file.

When i ran ifconfig it came up with this

(everything's answer is 0 and 0 bytes) (I don't know what this means or how to fix it)

Thanks I got it working in less then a few minutes after I read what you posted that was REALLY helpful thanks!

Oh and about the sound, sorry I didn't give you an update on that. I added my normal user to the audio groups, and used that kmix program. sound works great now ^_^ thanks!

I'm going to try mounting the drive now.

Don't give up!! Don't go back to the Dark Side. The more I mess around with Slackware and learn new things, the better I like it.
I try other distos, but Slack is my fav and the one I have the most fun with.

So i looked it up and it's a HPFS/NTFS file system. I followed you're code when I typed in mkdir /mnt/usb it said that it already exsisted. so then i entered the "mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb"
then when i hit enter, it just went to the next line? does that mean it worked? I clicked on "system" and then storage media. (I'm used to windows so i thought the external would show up in that folder, correct me if i'm wrong)

Anyway, it didn't show up Did I do something wrong? It's alright if I can't write files to that hard drive for now, as long as I can access them, and copy them over to my internal HD? The external has my backup of EVERYTHING all my pictures, music, movies, documents etc etc, and to top it off it's the only back up so reformatting it is out of the question, until I can back it up.

So if it mounted properly why can't i access it? Or better yet, how do you access it? (I'm a bit confused here :S not sure if it's not working and I couldn't find it if my life depended on it, OR it IS working but I'm just plain stupid.)

Also after editing that file to add that extra resolution, it doesn't show up in the "configure desktop/display" area i'm still getting 1024 x 768 as the max one thing i've noticed is it's added a new display "640 x 350"...which doesn't make any sense because when I open the "xorg.conf" file, the displays are STILL "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" that's also very confusing to me!! Good news is, I found out someone I know uses linux, he uses Red Hat, and seems to want me to switch to Red Hat because that's what he was taught in university. I'm not so sure though, I've known him for awhile. He said he'd come over sometime this week but it's still up in the air. So what do you guys think of Red Hat? How does it compare with Ubuntu and Slackware? Is it worth the switch? Currently I've got the ISO image of Ubuntu 6.10 burnt to DVD and ready to go. I was thinking about wiping slackware off so that I could try out Ubuntu, I think it would be cool to see how another distro ran, also maybe ubuntu would connect to the internet right away! Lemme know what you think!

Thanks and cheers!
Andrew

Okay, seems that you have the net interface down. Try this:

This should configure and then set the interface up.

And in case it doesn't work, post the output of

That will tell us what interfaces you have..


Cya,

Yes, it mean it worked (I hope ). To access you have to go inside /mnt/usb .


Let's hope this work so you won't have to stay changing from windows to linux again and again.

I think Slackware is not as easy as Ubuntu or Red Hat for a beginner. On the other hand, I prefer Slackware because it teached me how to really use linux (no, i don't want to start a flame) It's not full of 'wizards' etc etc...

When I go through netconfig, I I type in the host name and domain name as "Lypur" and "com" do they matter at all? then it asks for static or DHCP or loop back, now I select DHCP now it asks for a DHCP host name? I have no idea what to do here so i just hit enter now it says "confirm setup complete"
Hostname: Lypur
Domain name: com
IP address: (use DHCP server)
Netmask: (use DHCP server)
Gateway: (use DHCP server)
Nameserver: (use DHCP server)
Then I push "yes" to confirm.
Settings accepted. Basic network configuration is complete.

Now when I type I get
when i type ip link show
and still no internet