I've been trying for the last week to leave Windows (except for gaming) and embrace Linux. Unfortunately, all my efforts so far have been in vain.

I've tried Mandrake. But sadly, Mandrake doesn't seem to support my Motorola USB SB4100 cable modem. Furthermore, it fails to get my monitor's refresh rate, despite all my messing with XF86Config-4 files.

I've tried pure Debian. Couldn't get past XFree86 saying : "No screens found." Besides, it couldn't detect my USB mouse.

Along comes Knoppix CD. My USB devices work, my refresh rate is tolerable - 85Hz, and the only real problem is with my SB Audigy sound card. In short, Knoppix so far has been very nice to me.

However, when I try knx-hdinstall, the script runs without any troubles, Debian is installed and all seems well. Then I reboot and get a stream of digits that represents knx-install messing up the lilo.conf, which is no biggie and is quickly fixed with my handy boot floppy and the pain in the ass that is vi. The really sad part begins when I try running Konqueror - no connection. Usbview gives me something about usbdevfs, which wasn't on ramdisk even before the install, but my mouse works. However, with Knoppix booted from CD usbview detects all devices, including my mouse. Without Internet I can not find a way to fix my other problems without ackward rebootings.



Can you please help me with the following problems. If you don't I won't quit Linux, but I will be in a great pain while wasting days or weeks that could be spent doing less frustrating things.

1. Why is my USB modem and the whole USB kaboodle gone after knx-install

2. How can I preserve the CD boot settings and then put them on root after install? Which files do I need?

3. Did you, after installing Knoppix, had a lilo.conf file inproperly configured? I have two disks: hda (one partition) has Win2k; hdb (4 parts) has Linux + Swap + 2 FAT32 parts. lilo after hd install and the choice to install it into mbr, has boot=hdb instead of hda. It's easy to fix, but its existance is a cause for concern.

4. X-Windows has my monitor at the following: 1024x768@69/85
Windows2K has it at 1024x768@81/100. How can I fix it? 85 (or maybe 69 for horizontal) is too flickery for me. Xvidtune makes me very uneasy, since I have no idea what those numbers mean.

5. What files and programs run at boot time? I'm very interested in finding the configs for the frame buffer, which, like X-Windows, has my refresh way too low, as low as 60Hz.

6. How can I fix my sound? I think my problem is with ALSA, though I have no clue what ALSA is.

Hardware includes:
USB Motorola SB4100 Cable Modem
Audigy XGamer soundcard
Phillips Brilliance 107P Monitor
Geforce 3

Thanks for reading my long and poorly written post. Now gimme asnwers





Juozas Gaigalas





P.s. What is a modprobe?