Hello,

This question may sound somewhat niave, but I am rather new to Linux. I have Suse9.2 on a system with an AMD 64 bit processor. Suse runs great. I can use Yast and install other applications, of which they have 000's to download. This is all on the Download version.

I also installed Mandrake, and it didn't recognize my video board Unicrome on an K8MM MSI board, so I couldn't run it using KDE. I then installed it on another system, and it runs fine. However, when I go to download software using the recommended mirror sites, it says I have an invalid certificate. I really like the way Mandrake is organized, and am looking to purchase a package version, if it works on my machine. But I want to try it first. Personally, the download version works great on the other machine, however, the Mandrake club might be worth being a member of.

Does the download version prevent installation?

Regards,

Randy.

Nope it doesn't. Urpmi seems to work fine on most Mandrake releases and to find out how to set it up to install newer software and upgrades, go to zebulon.org.uk and urpmi.

No the download version does not prevent any installations.

The main differences between the download version and the commercial/club versions is that the latter includes a set of premade RPM's which contain drivers for various hardware devices...

Including:

Video cards; Nvidia, ATI, etc.
Softmodems: Slamr, etc
USB modems;

etc. etc.

These are a major convinience especially for a newcomer who may not know how to obtain the missing drivers otherwise.

Sadly IMHO, these should have been included with any release...

Once you have networking set up you should follow the directions (which Mandrake does NOT provide overtly...) for setting up the URPMI sources (see my sig...).

BTW: Unicrome ???

Unfortunately this is a rather brain dead, integrated video chipset.

Linux will only support it in framebuffer mode, so things like OpenGL and acceleration will not work.

Performance will be abysmal.

You are best off avoiding integrated video (and sound quite often...) and going with a dedicated video card.

Even a low end video card will enough ram will run rings around the integrated ones.

Thank you all for the comments. I do have an inept integrated video chip. It is one of the problems with my system, one I plan on fixing. I finally got 10.1 up on this system, and it seems to run fine. I will have to figure out how to install apps using the RPM's or building from the sources. It just may be worth buying it once, then taking the time to learn. I appreciate all your help.

Regards,

Randy.

Huh?

There is absolutely no need to do any such thing...

As we both posted URPMI (aka RPMdrake) does everything for you.

Building from sources will "break" your installation. This and forcing installs via RPM (instead of using URPMI) are typical newbie mistakes.