I am new to Linux in general, and really want to get to know anything, and everything possible...I realize taht some of you may say not to start off on Slackware, but i dont want to use a distro that is so mainstream. Now i do realize that slack is a somewhat widely used disrto, so i know that there are very knowledgable people who work with it. I reciently put together a new machine and have the new Soyo KT400, i know that alot of you are probably saying that I shouldnt have wasted my money and purchased the KT 333, but its too late for that, and i know that the difference between the performance is mimnimal at best. But does slackware support all of the onboard features of my Soyo?? does anyone think that i would be better off sticking with mandrake?? any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I own a Soltek KT400 board.

With Slackware 8.1 and it's 2.4.18 kernel, you will not get support for the KT400 chipset's UDMA and AGP. No features.

My solution was to recompile the kernel with the 2.4.20 source and the 2.4.21-pre4 patch.

Most modern distros are now shipping with the 2.4.20 kernel, which is fine...you'll get UDMA support, but the AGP will not be recognized. Again, the only solution is to recompile with the 2.4.21-pre4 patch.

If you want full support for your mobo, but don't want to mess with recompiling kernels, Mandrake 9.1 beta 1 and beta 2 are running the 2.4.21-pre1 and pre-2 kernels. If you go this route, be sure you load the agpgart module, as Mandrake won't do it for you and you'll be left without AGP accelerations.

Since you're a newbie, I suggest you wait until Mandrake 9.1 final comes out. By then, we should be seeing the 2.4.21 final kernel.

Good luck.

I got slack to work correctly, and i just added a realtec NIC, so i have an internet connection....i got X to work good as well, i just need to recomp[ile the kernel with the nvidia graphics stuff added, and also i have the linux files for my onboard LAN as well. The only problem i am incountering is that i have not been able to get my mous4e to work correctly....it stays at the top of the screen, and then at bests doesnt move in any fluid motion a all, it jumps around randomly, and sporatically....this happens with both my usb logitech mouse and a microsoft PS/2 mouse as well. Any clue as to what is the matter with it? thnks again for your original response, if you could help me out any further then i would greatly appreciate it!!

I was having this problem today as well with my Intellimouse Explorer.

Right now its workin fine, except mousewheel and 5 button. Try this:

in your XF86Config file(mine is in various places, just try to find the right one heh):

Under this line:

Section "InputDevice"


you should have stuff that looks like this:

Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"

The protocol on my system was set to "IMPS/2" or something along those lines and I just set it to "Auto", worked fine after that.


Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"


And I think you need this for mousewheel, although i dunno cause i havent tackled that issue yet ^^;

Thanks alot!