8.2 is rather quirky. I'd go with 9.0. Apart from that, here are my thoughts on the issues you've been having: > 1. The CD drive is actually a Toshiba DVD drive. Mandrake installed > all > right from it but afterwards is unable to read from any disc I insert. > All I get is an uninformative "input/output error". > check /etc/fstab and see whether it uses supermount (which to me never worked just right) and change it to good ole /dev/cdrom, or even better (if it is dvd drive) to /dev/scd0. Also make sure to make appropriate corrections to modules.conf and lilo in order to avoid cdrom module loading (u will be emulating scsi device -- I am not sure if this is necessary for dvd, but is definitely needed for any kind of cdr or rw work). > 2. The sound configuration is a joke, right ? I boot into KDE and > hear > the KDE tune just fine, but when I try to run any bundled sound > application (XMMS, MIDI synth, etc) I get an error saying that the > output device is unreachable. When I test sound using the Drake tool it > says it's playing an 8-bit sample but I hear nothing. The tool asks only > if you do or do not hear the sample, it offers no advice on what to do > if you don't hear anything. Did you disable the KDE sound server Arts (go to kde control center to find out more)? This is a known issue due to fact that arts is not compatible with all apps. You can use a hack similar to ld_preload stuff by typing artsdsp <appname> <params>, to try to hook up the app to the artsd even if it does not support it natively. > 3. The Internet configuration informs me that I have no connection > even > when I do. > No idea here, sorry. Again, try 9.0, it worked fine for me. > 4. The GCC 2.96 is weird, yes ? When I ran ./configure for the > latest > ALSA I get an error telling me that the C compiler cannot produce > executables. This, whether I'm normal user or root. Whafug??!! Sorry, can't help ya here either :-(. Hopefully this helps some. Regards, Ico
