I started first with Mandrake Community 10.0. For some time before that, though, I had been using Red Hat 9. Before that, I bought a copy of Linux For Dummies that included CD or DVD of Red Hat 7.3 in a sleeve in the back.

I guess it was about the time Winblows......uhhhhh...dows XP came out that I came across that Dummies book. I never tried to install the 7.3 Red Hat and I think the book was appropriately named because it was obviously written by dummies too. They may have known a lot about Linux but they didn't have a clue how to communicate that to a newbie in a way that someone could actually install and use the Linux that came with the book. Maybe one day I will write the definitive book for newbies on installing and using Linux, but not today.

Linux is not for the short tempered. Though it is getting easier to install and use it, it can still be puzzling at times. But, that's because if you are a long time Windows user it's hard to think outside of that box. It's like learning French......if your not French. That being said, immediately after the initial installation Mandriva 10.1 or higher you will have internet access (dialup will require additional setup and a wireless NIC may require some too), a full suite of office tools completely compatible with Microsoft’s Office Suite and a whole host of multimedia applications for watching, editing and listening to videos and music. There is even money management and financial software installed. There is also a plethora of software available free for Linux, thanks to a large community of tireless advanced users who contribute a tremendous amount of their own time to it. They are the heroes of Linux. If you spend a lot of time on “linuxquestions.org”, and you will, you will get to know many of them. It also helps to be a little bit of a puzzle solver or a little obsessive compulsive, but, then again, people who know a lot about the Windows operating system are the same way. If your the kind of person who says “I spend all day at work in front of a computer. I don't want to look at one when I get home.”, then Linux? Don;t go there honey.....uh-uh…..not yet. But that’s mostly because it’s new and unfamiliar.

I chose Mandriva because it seemed to be more cutting edge than Red Hat. They were early offering a version with the 2.6 kernel. I need the 2.6 because I had just bought a serial hard drive and the 2.4 kernel doesn’t support it. Eventually I became a paying subscriber to try out the promised benefits. I downloaded the Limited Edition 2005 because it offered the latest in everything. I like that. It installs much like windows. It boots from the CD, or in my case DVD, and asks you a series of questions that, once answered, initiates a long period of file copying.

Remember, a carefully worded goggle search can be a life saver. In fact, the internet is your best help source. Official installation documentation can be downloaded from the internet, but a multitude of forums are available from an internet search to help you. Chances are your problem has been answered. In addition to a lot of dedicated forums a free membership to linuxquestions.org is indispensable.

Most of the install questions are easy to answer. Below are some that might make you take pause or have caused problems for me. The order of occurrence may be wrong.

1.    Put your email address in as the security administrator’s password. I don't know what it is and I suspect it is irrelevant to most home users. At least I have never had a need for it.

2.    At some point you will find yourself at the Package Group Selection window and will be faced with a lot of pre-checked boxes. I checked everything but LSB on the left side and Network Computer Server, KDE and GNOME on the right side. Most of these are pre-checked by default. If your box will be in a network with other Windows machines make sure you place a check next to Network Computer Server (samba server). The samba server is software that allows you to file share between the Linux box and a Windows machine in a network and vice versa. Choose, also, to install both KDE and GNOME and pick one as your primary desktop manager. Make your computer a developer’s workstation. I may get some debate on this, but I believe you are better off doing this, and disk space is cheap these days. Some software requires developer software to work. These are software for developers and are identified by a –devel attached to the filename (example: avifile-devel).

3.    For dual boot purposes either Grub or LiLo will do. Goggle “boot loaders” to read about the differences. The only difference I have noticed is appearance. Install your boot loader in the MBR.

4.    Check all the boxes: Enable ACPI, Force No APIC and force no local APIC. There is a history of these causing modem problems in Mandirva.

5.    At the summary configuration screen you will see a lot of buttons on the right that say configure. Check your video card default configuration. Click the test button. If it doesn't test properly try another driver. There have been a few of problems of this sort so if you can't get it to work go to mandrivausers.org and search for a similar problem or goggle for a solution. A problem here can cause the desktop manager (KDE) to not start on boot. Some of these problems are known bugs and may be fixed now.

Some docs can be found at for version 10.1 at:

http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/MandrakeLinux/101/en/Starter.html/

That wasn’t too bad, now, was it? Once you get it booted up to the desk top, the first thing to do is set up urpmi. Urpmi is the medium through which you download and install most all the available software for Mandriva. It is, in my opinion, the single greatest advancement to Linux since the rpm from which it is an offshoot. Other distros have other variations of it like apt-get. To configure it simply Goggle “easy urpmi” and follow the instructions on the easy urpmi website and you will be up and running. Be aware the software is constantly improving and the mirror sites changing so you need to update your urpmi periodically or even set up urpmi from scratch again in extreme cases. To do so simply type urpmi.update –a.

Now that you can download and install software the easy way, let’s get after it. Ask yourself what you are going to do on your computer. If, as I did, you chose “multimedia station” at install at lot of great software might have been installed at that time. Check your installed applications first.

There are two competing desktop managers – KDE and GNOME each is found on all distros and comes with a whole host of software such as email, web browsers, music players, instant messaging and much more written specifically for them. Many as graphical frontends to popular and generally available command line software like dvgrab, transcode, ffmpeg and mencoder. If you loaded the files for both at install then regardless of which one you chose as you desktop manager you can download and use software that was written for either. What wasn’t loaded on install you can get with urpmi.

Below is a list of software I consider “must-have”:

OpenOffice – a substitute for Microsoft Office Suite (generally already installed)

Mjpegtools – media encoding

Transcode – media encoding

Ffmpeg – media encoding

Mpeg2enc – media encoding

Avifile – for viewing avi files

Imagemagic – photo cross-formatting

Xine – video playback

Mplayer – video playback and encoding

Libdvdcss – for viewing encrypted dvd’s (illegal in some countries) (don’t make copies of protected software)

Mencoder – video encoding

Kino – video downloading and editing

Dvgrab – video camera downloading

Grip – audio encoding/playback

Xmms – audio playback

Gimp2 – a substitute for photoshop

Lame – mp3 encoding (including VBR)

Toolame – mp2 encoding (including VBR)

Lve – video editing allows editing of .VOB files

Klvemkdvd – dvd authoring

Qdvdauthor – GUI for dvd authoring (installing will get two below automatically)

Dvdauthor – makes DVD for standalone players

Dvdslideshow – what it says!

Tovid – video encoding (easy to install from source only)

Evolution – Outlook substitute (email) with built-in spam blocker

Spamassassin – email spam blocking (backup to above if necessary)

Gphoto - digital camera downloading (may be installed with multimedia desktop)

Zphoto – a web based photo album (from source only)

Many of these are graphical user interface (gui) frontends to others in the list. In other words they a dependent on others to function. For example kino and dvgrab are written by the same person. Dvgrab is a commandline software to download video from your digital video camcorder. Kino is a graphical interface for executing dvgrab’s commands. Obviously kino won’t work without dvgrab installed. This is called a dependency.

Linux is very modular. Often, one software will call on a number of other programs to do what it does. This is not like Windows. When you install a Windows based software, that software does not typically require another software from another maker be installed for it to function. Powerpoint doesn’t require autocad to perform its drawing functions. It’s standalone. Transcode, however, does use ffmpeg and mpeg2enc to perform video encoding. So, to use one of these in the above list you may need some of the others.

This works to your advantage, often, in that with urpmi you can load several simultaneously if you chose them in the correct order. The advantage of urpmi or other package management applications is they will find dependencies for you when needed. If you install transcode via “urpmi transcode” from command line (cui) or gui urpmi will also load ffmpeg and mpeg2enc for you. So, install qdvdauthor first and you will get dvdauthor, dvdslideshow and gimp not to mention other software you might be unaware of with it. Installing klvemkdvd will get you transcode, ffmpeg, mpeg2enc and lve if they are not already there.

Before starting remember, in Linux, capitols and lowercase letters are as different as a and z. Also, some very good software including some above are not available through urpmi. This is generally because they are too new or are out of the mainstream. To pick software to load in Mandriva you can use a gui, There is an icon on the desktop that accesses configuration services from which you can choose software to install or you can find it also from the system main menu found in the same spot as Windows Start menu. I prefer to use the command line. In any event to load software you have to have root access. For this and several other reasons I keep about 3 terminal windows open all the time.

In a terminal window from any directory or folder type su for super user and your administrator password. Then type urpmi qdvdauthor is a good start. If you spell it wrong a list of similarly spell packages will be listed, otherwise urpmi will list the package and all the dependencies and ask if it may proceed. If the package or any of its dependencies are on the installation disks you will be prompted to insert that disk, otherwise the software will be downloaded from a mirror according to your urpmi setup (done earlier) and installed. It’s as simple as that. If the package is not available you’ll be told, or if it’s already installed you’ll be told.

For those that are not available from urpmi you have 2 other options to acquire that software: rpm or source. Two such programs are in the list above: tovid and zphoto. In fact neither one of these is available in rpm, only in source, but let’s consider an rpm package not available in the urpmi database.

Prebuilt rpm’s are available from a number of web sites and are built for specific distros. I prefer pbone.net. Choose the advance search and specify only rpms for your distro. Once you have found it and downloaded it install it as su (root) in a terminal window by typing: “rpm –ivh mydownloadedrpm.rpm”. If there are no missing dependencies it should install. If there are a list of missing dependencies will appear and the rpm will not install. You must first install the dependencies (see why urpmi is so good?). Again, however, urpmi comes to the rescue. Before you would have had to search out rpms for these dependencies but with urpmi you can most often easily install them and then retry your original software.

Sometimes it can get a little more hair on it. Rpm may come back and tell you a specific file is needed rather than a software package. Again pbone.net or a google search on the file name will return the package that contains the missing file. Installing that package will often solve the dependency, unless that package is not in the urpmi database and has dependencies of its own. You can see a vicious cycle starting to form. With package management (urpmi) this scenario is becoming rarer.

Installing from source can be easy or have you pulling your hair out. It suffers from the same problem of dependencies as does rpm’s but the dependencies are not straightforwardly listed as in rpm. The install will sometimes scroll out massive amounts of configuration data and then abruptly terminate with an error message indicating a file was not found or some vague clue to the problem or no clue at all. Within the source files is a README or INSTALL file that list dependencies and instructions and you will think you have everything ready but it bails anyway.

Let me give you a specific example of the most common reason for a failure to compile in my experience. It comes form my effort to install from source the program zphoto. I had installed all the dependencies listed on the author’s website but could not get full functionality from the program. In the configure step an error occurred where the configure routine could not find a file avifile.config. But, I had installed the program avifile as instructed. It turned out the file avifile.config was only in the developer’s version of avifile. After I installed avifile-devel via urpmi the configure step found the .config file and installed correctly. Now when I install support software like that I always install the developer version as well if it is available. With some failures you can spend days on the internet trying to figure it out.

If you’re looking to read some reviews on Linux distros for the desktop go to http://distrowatch.com/. If you find yourself using a package consistently you might want to consider making a donation to the author to show your appreciation for his hard work. Below is a link to some of my favorite Linux resource sites. Check them out.

Linux Links

On my Linux HowTo's page there are some procedures I've assembled for video editing and desktop customizing such as:

Setting default applications

 

Blocking popups in konquer

 

Audio dubbing

 

ISO creation and burning

 

Adding files to an in use CD+-RW in K3B

 

Converting wma files to mp3 format with grip and lame

   

Fixes to common Linux Problems

Good Luck,

John