I'm glad that you will have a positive attitude out of all of this. I remember struggling and and strugling with Slack 3.5 until I finally figured out the deal with my hardware.

Best of Luck.

My mistake, I don't know where I got the laptop bit from, the rest of my post holds true i think.

The post I found that I thought was relevant was:

http://www.ibiblio.org/onebase/oneba...p=show&bugid=4

Anyway, good luck. Despite the fact that no-one here has been able to solve your problem, I think you have already been admired for your tenacity.

best wishes

tobyl

Well thanks again, but I think that positive attitude is slipping pretty fast. I installed Mandrake 9.2 today, and my experience with it is actually worse than the one with Slackware. Installation was a tiny bit confusing, in fact it was odd that most of the time I had to stop and think about what I was reading because some of it was dumbed down a tad. The installation went fine until I had to configure LILO. Because there are more users on this computer than just me, and I am the only one who plans to use Linux, I don't want to have a boot loader, just a boot floppy so this install will be, for all intents and purposes, hidden and out of sight. However, the boot floppy fails to create. I've gone through five tries and three floppy disks, and it's not telling me why but the creation of the boot floppy fails every time. I figured fine, I would just install LILO and maybe restore the MBR once I found a solution and had a working system. For some reason, the LILO setup fails as well. What could cause this?

Also, the keyboard issues have returned, only this time they are there 100% of the time. Because I have no boot loader or boot floppy, I am using the "rescue" function of the Install CD to attempt to get into Linux. As soon as everything loads, my keyboard goes dead again. I pressed "Scroll Lock" repeatedly to try and pinpoint the exact moment when the keyboard goes unresponsive, because it worked throughout the entire installation process and allows me to type "rescue" after booting off the CD.

The keyboard dies after the loading of (I assume) most of the kernel, directly between the message "Loading the Program Into Memory" and the menu of Rescue options. I cannot see the messages because they fly by too quickly, but it appears to be the loading of the USB drivers. I didn't see the word PS/2 in all that, but it might be in there. I don't know enough about motherboards to know if the PS/2 connection is controlled by chipset drivers, or the BIOS, or whatever, but at this stage is the moment when the keyboard goes unresponsive, as if it were unplugged. I assume there is something wrong with the PS/2 port to cause this to happen in two different distros.

So here I sit, with my Mandrake install even more problematic than my Slackware one. Any ideas?

Edit: tobyl, that post was just a bit frightening to read, because that is my exact computer model, a Dell Dimension 8250. Is there something wrong with the mainboard? I couldn't find out what model number it is, but I know it uses the Intel i850 chipset.

Well, I think that the Linux experience is different for everyone.

For instance, I started with Slackware and had no problems with it.

Hjulvisp,

I read through a bunch of your previous posts to see what other people offered, but I haven't read them all, so you may already have covered this. Have you looked at your BIOS settings for the "Plug n' Play OS" setting? If you haven't already done this, and your BIOS has this setting, try disabling it. This caused me all kinds of grief with setting up a network card when first starting with Linux. Might affect other hardware too.

Hang in there...

Thanks, Keith, I'll take a look at that. For now, I have an important update, even though it's something that probably doesn't belong in the Slackware forum anymore.

I managed to get everything working at once, putting GRUB on a floppy and booting from there, and all the sudden all my keyboard problems are now irrelevant because the system boots properly. I finally have a working system, so now I can start learning how to use Linux hands-on. Thanks for the support, and I'll let you guys know when I go back to Slack

"However, even with only one plugged in, and the secondary unplugged, the primary will lose its signal when I start X."
[COLOR=indigo]

I am a newbie too, and my first attempt at installing a distro was with Redhat 9. I installed it with the default of starting X. Finally learned that the problem was with the onboard graphics card by using Windows (I know I know, but you use what you are familiar with!) to determine which graphics card I had, then googled until I found out that "it" had a problem with Linux - apparently all distros. I also found the work around in the search. In my case, the default resolution was too high, and after booting to a command line and reconfiguring the resolution, I could use Linux. fyi, that adapter is a "S3 Graphics ProSavageDDR."

I said "first attempt." I am fortunate enough to be in a 2 computer family, so I ended up leaving that computer as a Windows box and turning the other computer into a dual boot system. Graphics are flawless, but still haven't been able to get its winmodem to work. Oh well, the education is usually in the journey, and the more problems one encounters, the better the education.

Hope you find your problem.

Sounds like you are on the right track tho, reading forums and FAQs.

I personally don't believe Slack is the best distro to begin with, it's known to not be very "User-friendly".
But if you keep at it, and treat your new OS as a learning experience (which U already are it sounds like),
things will finally click in to place. About a year or 2 from now, you'll be laughing at yourself at how much
of a newb you really were. Remember, use the search engines, somebody out there has had the same
problems as you, I guarantee it. Most "newb" questions aren't answered as completely as they should
be because they've already been answered time and time again in forums, faq's, man pages, etc.

Good luck to ya....

quote Nitrox /
------------
I personally don't believe Slack is the best distro to begin with, it's known to not be very "User-friendly".
------------

i think Slack is very user-friendly, more than other distro's. every program i try to run ( compiled myself or from tgz ) will run.

if you start with Slack and you really want to get things working, you will succeed, and have learned a lot about the use of the OS of the future.
and that's very user-friendly....

egag

Should have said Newbie-Friendly I guess.. Sorry.

With 354 posts Egag, anything is going to be user friendly

hi Nitrox,

there's no need to say sorry, your opinion is just as valid as mine.
i think anyone will say the distro he or she is using is the best .
the great thing with Linux is that you've got a choice ! ( distro's, window-manager's etc....). Most people that use Slackware ( and went through the start-up troubles ) are able to use other distro's as well.

and don't be mislead by someone's number of posts.
quantity doesn't mean quality in any way.
i'm still learning every day

egag