Ok gang,
here we go again. I had been having problems with the Mandrake OS that I installed. When I booted up and logged on sometimes the keyboard wouldn't function, so after requesting help I tried everything suggested and no dice! I assumed that the Mandrake program was faulty so I decided to install a Fedora OS that I had. I began the install and everything went fine up until the third screen which displayed “Welcome to Fedora,” and displayed some sort of media test screen and gave me the option to run the test or skip it. At that point the keyboard went south on me again, which tells me that the Mandrake OS wasn't faulty at all. I have been racking my brain trying to figure this out, and I simply don't know what to do anymore. I really want to become an experienced Linux user but I can't get this f*@!^ing keyboard thing right! If you have no clue here (as I) would you know of a Linux site that could offer a telephone number to some sort of tech support so that maybe I could talk to someone?

The keyboard not workind under 2 OS's hints that maybe the hardware is defective. Does that keyboard work ok with a winblows OS?

Does the keyboard stop working just in X or in console also? Are you choosing the correct keyboard config when you install Linux? Like 104 key ect.

Have you checked HCL (hardware compat list) to see if anyone else has had a prob with it?

Mandrake uses Xfree86. Fedora uses Xorg.

You can config your keyboard with
xf86cfg
xf86config
xorgconf

If they keyboard is dying while in console it may be defective or incorrectly configed. Can you try another keyboard and see if the prob goes away?

http://www.hk8.org/old_web/linux/lnut/
http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/
http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/Har...WTO/index.html
http://www.linuxprinting.org/
http://tldp.org/

Is the keybard any special type? Meaning, is it wireless, a media-center keyboard, etc?
Does it use USB or PS/2?

My board works fine in Windows, and I've switch the USB ports just to be certain, and it's running fine in Windows. I used Linux last night and I booted up this morning and nothing. I do not understand what you ment by
try configs:
xf86cfg
xf86config
xorgconf

How exactly, do I do this?

The X...
Mandrake uses Xfree86. Fedora uses Xorg.

You can config your keyboard with
xf86cfg
xf86config
xorgconf
These are the display servers
you need to config your keyb or select an appropriate one in the tools mentioned

Ryan, does your keyboard work outside of X? X is the graphic environment.

Can you boot single user mode without X and does the keyboard work?

If the keyboard works ok outside of X then you probably need to config it right. if you are booting directly into X then you won't know. If you change the line in your inittab file with the 5 to a 3

id:5:initdefault:

You can boot up to a shell, text only without a GUI. Then type

xf86config

You can configure Xfree with that

The config file is located at /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or /etc/X11/XF86Config
inittab is located at /etc/inittab
You will have to be root to edit them.

Or
While X is running you can enter in Konsole
xf86cfg
to configure Xfree86

Back up a config file before editing it in case something goes wrong.