Standard Mandrake newbi questions

[osage]

Wondering if I need to update to Mandrake 8.1 from my current ver 8.0..My SIS900 nic was detected but not configured.

this is what SIS has to say about a driver for the SIS900....You can install Linux system with Linux kernel 2.2.15 or later version. Or, you can contact with your Linux distributor for kernel update.

For SiS630E/SiS630S/730S LAN support in Linux system, SiS provides beta driver for you to update your Linux kernel to support SiS630E/SiS630S/SiS730S. It's backward compatible with

SiS630 and SiS900. Pls read the Readme file first to install the following two files, sis900.c and sis900.h .

so is Mandrake 8.0 compiled from 2.2.15 or is it older ?

thanks, and yes I'm a NOB to linux

ECS K7S5A SIS735 chipet mobo / 1.33 T-bird / 512 DDR pc 2100

 

[n0cmonkey]

It should be a newer one.

 

[BlackOmen]

When I used Mandrake 7.2, it had kernel 2.2.17. Both 8.0 and 8.1 were out sometime after 2.4 was out, so you can probably bet on 2.2.18 and something from 2.4. Otherwise, check to see if the driver is loaded by running lsmod. If you sis900 listed, then it is. Otherwise you can run modprobe sis900 as root. to load the driver. Once the driver is loaded, you'll probably just have to do network configuration. Mandrake most likely has a util to assist in that.

Edit: you can find your kernel version using uname -r.

 

[osage]

Thanks, I'll see if I can figure out how do do that.

 

[osage]

Ok, thanks connected running mandrake now.

things look a bit strange, but it's been years since I used Netcape.

 

[BlackOmen]

There are many alternatives to Netscape. You'll find that Netscape is just as crash happy on Linux as it is in Windows. Alternatives include: Galeon, Mozilla, Konqueror and Opera. Any of them is a good choice, with Galeon and Opera being more lightweight than the Konq and Mozilla.

 

[osage]

Of the browsers that are installed I like Konqueror the best.

Prob now is that I can send e-mail in any of the mail progs, but I can't recieve..netscape gives me a password error, and Kmail just acts like its working but I don't get any mail. i have sent mail to myself using the kids machine, but I don't get it unless I boot to Windows..

the other thing that is a bit odd is now when I use IE all my pages display somewhat differently, text size is not the same and the quality of the display is very different from site to site.