[CLUE-Tech] Installation problem

[Matt Gushee]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 05:12:40PM -0600, George Gammel wrote:
> 
> I have an installation problem.  I have an older Dell Pentium 1 desktop.  It has a SCSI hard disk and cdrom(NEC).  On the 1st attempt, I was trying install Mandrake 8.2.  All seemed to go fine until attempting graphics config.  The machine uses ATI Mach64 chipset.  I tried several combos of video card/monitor selections.  All gave some kind of error.  It seemed to boot up OK to the command line.

....

> I am wondering if I should try some other kind of distro.  If so, any opinions on which is a good choice for my situation would be appreciated.  If anyone has any ideas, I would be grateful.  Please bear in mind that I am a Linux newbie in any responses.  Thanks.

I wouldn't give up on Mandrake just yet. The disk problems sound like
bad hardware and/or bad media, so those could happen with any
distribution. As for setting up X ... I think your video card should be
supported; different distributions have different config tools, and it's
possible that some other distro's configurator would work where
Mandrake's doesn't, but who knows? Sometimes you just have to do it by
hand (don't panic yet).

If you do go with another distribution, SuSE might be a good choice.
I've done a few SuSE installs, and in my experience it always seems to
have a bit better hardware support than other distributions. If you
stick with Mandrake, the older one might be better ... version 10 might
just be too big to run on your machine.

And if you do need to configure X manually, there are people here who
can help. You will need to have access to the most detailed specs you
can find for the video card and monitor, and be prepared to report
exactly what error messages you're getting, and so on.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Haven Rock Press            Horses bear manure through
Englewood, Colorado, USA        its fields;   
books at havenrock.com         When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)