Hello World!

As is my usual custom when joining new forums, I like to introduce myself with a post that simply tells a bit of my story. Generally, some people take exception to this, but quite often, it help with further posts.

I am a 20 year old software developer from darkest africa. Although I initially studied C++ 6.0 from Microsoft, and spent extensive time learning OpenGL and DirectX through numerouse tutorials on the net, NeHe being the best, I now have a job writing .NET code in VB and C#. In my spare time I write C++, sail a Laser competitively, read etc...)

My home PC is currently an:
AMD Athlong XP 3000+ (Barton)
1024MB DDR 400 RAM (2x512 Dual Channel)
Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2 Motherboard with nForce2 Chipset
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (PCI)
Intel 536ep Based 56k Modem (PCI, internal)
80GB Maxtor 6Y0L0M0 SATA HDD (8mb Cache) (boot, root and swap)
120GB Seagate ATA 133 HDD (8mb Cache) (NTFS, archive of old windows files)

Due to the extensive and dangerouse doses of proprietary software that I encounter at work, I recently decided to give bill the finger and erase windows from my home PC. I spent about a week installing and screwing up various downloaded Linux distros, including Redhat 9, SuSE 9.1 Personal, Mandrake 10 and a local distro from my ISP's FTP server called DAMNSMALL. After all this, I decided that SuSE was the one that I liked the most, except for the fact that SuSE 9.1 contained nothing that was required to build and install any other software, so I ordered the boxed version of SuSE 9.2 Pro from Novell. It arived earlier this week.

So far, I have installed it on my 80GB drive, leaving my old NTFS archived files on the 120GB, which include extensive lists of StarTrek Enterprise episodes, and fiddled arround a bit. I have successfully removed the bundled 536EP drivers for my modem and installed new ones from Intel's site, and dialed up to the net. I have also setup my SoundBlaster with no problems, mounted the ntfs partition on my second drive to get access to my old files and fiddled a bit with KDevelop.

I installed a standard desktop, with KDE as the window manager. I installed KDEvelop on top of that, the kernal build environment and GCC.

Things that I have not done yet include setting up 3D OpenGL accelleration for my Radeon 9800 Pro, installing Cedega, and picking up the old OpenGL coding notes again.

That's it! Although this may seem like useless information, it gives some background on me that may be usefull when combined with the questions I will definitely be asking... feel free to ignore.

Stephen Charles Martindale

as a fellow South African... Welcome to LQ bru!

Well, well running into a few guys from "darkest Africa" . Welcome to the LQ community.

Thanks. Don't get me wrong, SA has great weather, great scenery and .. uh ... more great weather. That's about it, really.

I am a Zimbo myself, just found the "darkest Africa" part humorous. As for the weather, I really miss it coz here in the UK, it's so dark and miserable at the moment, very depressing.

lol! that's y i'd probably only go back for a holiday
although mary jane is extremely cheap!

It's an intro thread, so moved to Member Intro.

Welcome to LQ, Stephen!

I think this is a conversation for an entirely different forum.

Welcome to LQ

Sorry, Mara, I never realised that there was an Intro forum. (All that TINY text, what about us people with high resolutions, like 1600x1200?)

that's where increasing your dpi come in

anyway... i was just wondering how ur getting on? have u gotten the ur ati drivers? I was actually a radeon die hard always slaging off any game displaying the 'best played on nVidia' logo and sometimes even refusing to play it that is until a friend ask me to install drivers for his FX5200, i was SOOOOOO tempted to tell him to bugger off and get a 'decent' gf card but a friend in need 'n all that.So when I was absolutely stunned at how much nVidia supported linux. I literally went out the next weekend and bought the same card, so now my radeon's lying on the cold wooden floor under my bed, not even in its anti static.....MYGOD, have i got issues??!!?!