First time linux user

[s1337m]

Hi,

I'm a cs major so I decided to dual boot win/linux. I have some very basic background knowledge of linux.

I successfully installed SUSE 10.0 and am trying to get the sound/vid card/wireless to work and other hardware aspects as they come up. I've been googling for some help and the answers include compiling kernels and frankly I don't know how to do that. The vid card supports 1280x800 on win but only goes to 1200x800 on suse. The sound stutters and doesn't work and I don't know how to approach getting my wireless internet working. Can someone please help (you might have to hold my hand on this)? It would be much appreciated.

[redhead]

First of:
What soundcard, and what modules are loadet, and are you using alsa, and what permission is on /dev/dsp and /dev/audio ?

What type vid card, and what settings are you using (refresh rate/pixel depth/etc) ?

What type WIFI card do you have ?
http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility for madwifi cards, see if yours is listed there.
As for prism54 based cards (http://prism54.org/fullmac.html), at this stage it is quite a mess which are supported, and if theres beeing worked on support for those, but a stock kernel should have buildin support for atleast the fullMAC types.

If it is a madwifi supported one, then you might need to fetch the latest madwifi-ng and build it, but once we know what type it is, we'll take it from there.

For using wireless, I suggest you'd get wireless-tools installed and take a closer look at iwconfig/iwpriv, as those are the main commands used in setting up WIFI connection.

[trickster]

Hi,

as redhead mentioned, please post your specific hardware, so we can better help you.

[s1337m]

i seemed to have sound and video working.... but I havent tried playing a DVD yet so I will do that later. After installing ATI drivers, I tried entering the ATI console through one of the GNOME menus and it wouldn't open. Anyway, I'm still working on the wireless and its a broadcam 54g card.... I heard some things about ndiswrapper should I proceed with that?

[redhead]

http://linux-bcom4301.sourceforge.net/ See if that driver does it for you, else try with ndiswrapper.
edit, hmm... it seems that isn't going anywere, so you're better of with ndiswrapper, just install ndiswrapper, load it with your .sys driver for your windows and you should be up and running.
Here's a howto on it

edit, edit, edit... It seems the broadcom driver is located here

[s1337m]

i tried ndiswrapper, and i got this message when trying to install it:

make -C driver install
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/sean/ndiswrapper-1.7/driver'
Can't find kernel sources in /lib/modules/2.6.13-15.7-default/build;
give the path to kernel sources with KSRC=<path> argument to make
make[1]: *** [prereq_check] Error 1

not sure what to do there...

i downloaded the broadcam drivers and read the README but its discussing requirements of my kernel (it has to have networking on it)... how would i check that? also, theres no instructions on that page, im not sure what to make for the driver installation

[trickster]

You need to install the kernel sources. This differes from distro to distro. For SuSE, it should be something like

yast2 -i kernel-source

or

yast -i kernel-source

[s1337m]

i installed the kernel sources and get the same message

[trickster]

What is the result of the command

rpm -q kernel*

[s1337m]

output: package kernel* isn't installed...

i ran the yast command above to install them, is there a step im missing?