Help!!!!!!! Installing Linux for the FIRST time!

[lsakhvoruk]

Anybody and everybody please help! Last night tried installing a copy of TurboLinux 6 Server Lite (it was free with something I bought so I figured I try it before buying Mandrake). Well, I partintioned my HD with a 500 MB Linux swap in the beginning, 900MB Linux after that and then FAT32 for Windows. I went through the installation on the CD and everything seems to go well. Then I restart my PC and after it finds a bootable device a message comes up PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT and so I press any key and thats it it reboots just to do the same junk again. I enabled the Linux partition as Bootable during the installation process. Since the only thing I know about Linux is that its UNix-based OS, I need LOTS of help from you guys!!! Please post any and all suggestions! I think I am going to Circuit City today and buying a Mandrake package, but I would still like to be able to install this thing I am working on, it will be a great victory for me! Thanks to all! Leo.

[Statica]

Ok in order of things you should be checking..

Where is your BIOS booting up from as the boot device order? Is the drive you installed Linux to your first boot device?

Did u install a bootloader? LILO/Grub or something during the installation process? Where did you install it to? The MBR is right.

Did you make a bootdisk? If so use that to boot before going any further

U said that you partitioned the HD prior to installation? How did u partition / format before installation? Did you use DOS FDISK or something like that? Did u boot using the CD?

Typically for a person working with Linux for the first time .. I'd recommend simply booting to Linux using the CD (go to bios and make your CD the first boot disk). If you dont have that option, make yourself a bootdisk. Switch to DOS and look in your CD for boot images, and read the text file for further info.
Use the OS you are installing to format your drives, stay away from partition magic etc doing it. Partitioning it ok.
Post back with specs of your machine, and hopefully one of us can suggest a good home user partitioning schema for u.
are u dual booting? Windoze 9x no like not being first on the drive.
Typically, u need the following /boot - 16MB, a swap partition depending on the RAM u have and the utilization, I dont know what you are doing and how much RAM u have but 500MB is a LOT!! And give it all to / if you arent sure of the rest.

Hopefully this will get u started. & Oh yeah make a bootdisk and install a bootloader.

[lynchmob]

While your in the bios,check to see if plug n play is disabled.The last time I installed Linux(MDK7.1)I disabled PnP so my hardware would be recognized.Things may have changed since then,but I havent heard any different.
lynch

[lsakhvoruk]

Well, I gave up on trying to install that TurboLinux thing and went to Walmart and got a copy of Mandrake 8.0. Installation was very easy and now it seems to be running pretty good. The only thing is that when I use GIMP and try to click around on different tools the program just shuts down (disappears), I don't know if its for the lack of memory I have 256MB or some sort of a bug!? Plus some programs don't want to run in KDE but will run in GNOME and vice versa. Do they make application specifically for GNOME and KDE without them baing able to run in both!? Thanks! Leo.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

start GIMP, do what you're doing to get it to die...then as soon as it dies switch to the console and see if there are any error messages. or look at the launcher and find out where Mandrake puts GIMP, open an xterm window and start GIMP from there, when it dies have a look at the xterm you started from and see if there are any errors, you might have missed a dependancy or something.

you can always grab the sources from http://www.gimp.org and build it yourself if something is really wrong, but remove the version Mandrake installed first.

yes, KDE and Gnome are entirely different environments. there are kde apps and there are gnome apps, although there is some compatibility.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

what motherboard are you using on that computer? I've haven't had much problem with PnP, except for PnP ISA cards.

[lsakhvoruk]

I am using an ABIT KT7A-RAID. What about the amount of memory that it needs (I have 256MB)? Havent tried what you suggested yet WickedLittleSlaveBoy. Thanks for the advice though. Leo.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

256M RAM is more than enough for any X86 OS I've ever seen. I think you can install quite a few distributions with 4M physical memory, but I believe it can run in 2M....because of the RAM drives used during installation. 32M wouldn't be too good for Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment/GIMP/Netscape but would run a light WM + X setup decently....64M runs everything so-so. 128M and above runs everything pretty well, the unused RAM will be used for caching...so you'll get more performance out of the box the more RAM you install. you can never have too much RAM, well almost...with older BIOSes, it might not be detected above 64, easy enough to fix, just pass an arguement through LILO to tell the system how much you have....the other problem is harder, if you don't have enough TAG RAM to address larger memory sizes, not all memory will be capable of being cached by the TAG RAM and the system will slow because it has to directly access the RAM without a buffer cache.

of course, with the benefits of a larger cache also comes a downside....you could lose a larger ammount of data if you shut down before the file cache has been flushed.

the motherboard

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

err, the motherboard question was actually for lynchmob.

[lynchmob]

Hi,WLSB.The motherboard is an Intel 440BX w/on-board sound(disabled-used a CL pci 16 instead).They come with the Gateway g-6 400 series.
When I first installed MDK on this comp,I had sound but no modem,and running drakconf didnt help.Reinstalled with pnp disabled and everything worked.
With PnP on,MDK7.1 didnt see my Supra Express modem and even though the isapnptools looked for it,it came up with nothing.Turning off pnp let the bios configure everything and MDK got the configuration from the ECSD.Its worked fine ever since.Except for those nbtk errors
lynch

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

ahhhh...that would explain it. sound can be difficult no matter what, depending on the card/chip, but ISA-PnP is a b****. the only thing that makes it good, is that some manufacturers are nice enough to give you configuration utilities that allow you to disable PnP and set the resources manually.