OK, I'm completely new at this linux stuff, so I've installed Mandrake 10 official, because its supposed to be easy. My first goal was to get it to connect to the internet...I'm on a university lan so I need to set it to dhcp. I'm pretty sure its set to dhcp but it still says that the lan is "not connected." So, I'm thinking I need to get the drivers from nvidia since its integrated on my nforce2 board. But it seems they ONLY work with kernel 2.4.20, I'm guessing I have 2.6 something or another, because I dont know how to figure out what kernel I have or change kernels. Meanwhile, linux is crashing randomly, or so it seems. Is there anything I can do about this?

Well, as for most of your questions, I'm not exactly sure, but to find your kernel version just type at the terminal:

uname -r

and it will tell you. I'm pretty postitive that MKD10 is on the 2.6 kernel.

Does your network card come up if you do

lspci

from a teminal?

check this out:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...130#post971130