RTFM = Read The F#@%ing Manual, a little harsh when fully pronounced, but the term in abreviated form is not (in my usual understanding) used with force, but rather a statement "you need to read the book dude"

I could not find a mandrake specific kernel tutorial, however I did find a very good looking generic one:
http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html

this looked good glancing it over.

I don't have a manual or a book.

Also installing kernal would help with instaling netgear usb adapter??

thx

installing the kernel is a part of it, knowing how to compile your own kernel will allow you to compile modules, and use patches, these are key to getting newer hardware working, this is because even if the driver is in the lernel it is not likely in the vanilla or distro kernels.

Vanilla kernel: the kernel configuration defaulted or recommended for most by the kernel developers
Distro kernel: usually a take off fromt he vanilla kernel, a kernel specifically designed for the target audience of a linux distribution.

compiling my own kernel was the first thing I learned to do in linux back in 99' on slack 7.

hey

i'm confused in some places

how would i check which series i'm using??

-------------
how do i know if the hardware and software are meeting the sys requirements??

thx

if it is a brand new version of mandrake, say 10 or 10.1 then you meet the software requirements. having sucessfully installed mandraker you obviously meet the hardware requirements.

the installed sources should be in /usr/src/linux, if not then no sources are installed.

/usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes would be the full path

I opened konsole
and typed this

/usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes

it said no such file or directory

thanks

Sorry to laugh, bu tI think you need to go through some basics of linux and usage before you attempt to install this driver. start with a smaller project.

I know, i have never worked with linux, I just want to install my wireless card so i can get on the internet!!! I don't get why it's so hard i mean in windows it's done by it self?? Is there a way u can tell me how i'd install it or atleast give me a tutorial where to learn the basic

thx

from my research I do not think that wireless card works in linux yet, but based on the reasurch I hink it will be supported shortly:

http://www.prism54.org/

that driver is what is needed, this is from there news site:
your card uses this chip, and it is usb, the chip is supported, usb is being worked on, depending on the speed of the developers it should be up soon, when it is you need to go the this site: http://www.prism54.org/


download it from:
http://www.prism54.org/download/

download the tarball, the kernel patches are a bit over your head for now

to install follow these directions:
http://prism54.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.c...ME?view=markup

you can go ahead and try it, preliminary usb support might make it work for your card. be sure to use the cvs tarball, cvs means current version, when a developer makes a change it is posted to cvs. the others such as stable and unstable do not have all the current changes, they just have a better chance of working for people with cards known to be supported, yours is not listed as known to be supported.

one more thing...

Please do not make comments about what windows would do. If you liek windows so much than use it, linux is not windows, that is the point, as for ease of use.. Well say you have a mountain you need to climb, there is a path marked easy, and a path marked difficult, if you start limbing the difficult side after reading the sign you have no right to complain "why is the path marked difficult so difficult?" so, I am not gonna ream you for being interested in linux, but I hope nobody told you it would be easy, and I hope you understand it won't and don't assume it will be from now on. as to weather or not it should be made more easy is a topic for debate and should be discussed in a general forum. so once again plz refrain from non-constructive irrelivant windows references :-D. I am happy to help you, and hope you will find joy in the experiance of learning linux and using it to accomplish your tasks.

ugg, i'm confused again, sorry for being so stupid

Unpack the tarball :
tar jxvf prism54-cvs-latest.tar.bz2

Change to the prism directory:
cd prism54-cvs-latest.

Since i don't have intnert, do i download it and burn it before i unpack it????

and do i use the konsole to do this "cd prism54-cvs-latest."??

thanks

everything mentioned here is to be done in a console, konsole will work, it also has to be done as root user.

so with no internet yes you will have to put it on a cd and ten copy it to the /usr/src directory on the linux machine from the cd.

then go into a console, konsole works. if you are not root then you need to su to root, type this:

su root

it will prompt you for your root password

after this is done go to /usr/src
(cd /usr/src)

this is where you type all the commands the readme tells you

lol thx

sorry i did not mean to diss linux, i actually like it more than windows, i just wonder why is it not supported?? and why is linux diffucult, is it because they create so many different types?? and if that's why i understand, if thats not why then it must be the creators of the usb adapter who don't want linux to be supported

thanks

many hardware makers do not feel making linux drivers is worth the time, they think the ammount of peopel who will buy it using linux is too small a market, often they are right. just as often they are not. Linux does not have support for a lot fo hardware because of this. Also the kenrel is open source, drivers for linux usually need at least some degree of openness, this means doing something for free, businesses do nto understand that it will actually help them financially because more people might buy the hardware, many though are correct in thinking they would loose money, depends on the product and what they charge for. the companies biggest on supporting linux are intel and nvidia, both make special efforts to produce linux support for their hardware.

no as for difficulty, that is because the heart of linux, the kernel, and the core utilities (gnu utilities) are not made with ease of use in mind, they are made by hobbyists who make them not for everyone on earth, but for other hobbyests liek them who liek to play around with things and could care less about easy. recently different distributions have taken these utilities and put them into packages that are easy to use, problem is they have to be general and cannot account for every hardware possiblity.

LOL RTFM stands for Read The Fucking Manual (and sorry for the bad words)