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Translated KDE/Linux Usability Report Available
WHudson writes "Relevantive AG, a German consulting firm who recently completed a study on Linux usability, posted their results in English translation today. Bottom line: Linux nearly as easy to use as Windows XP, but the wording of system and program messages could use some more clarity."
Laptops are famous for being a pig to install Linux onto. Proprietory hardware and unhelpful manufacturers make driver support very difficult.
That laptop has ATI graphics and LCD, which can be a pain to setup manually (don't use modelines with 4.x X!). I'd start with 16 bit VESA at 1024x768 14" (or 1400 x 1050 15"?) native resolution. If possibly, use 4.3 XFree86 as well. If VESA works, then try looking at different ATI drivers, probably "radeon" or "ati", and 24 bit colour.
As others have suggested, maybe it's worth trying a different distro (Mandrake and SuSE are worth a crack) because they have slightly different kernels and different setup/config tools. They have setup options for LCD screens, so just choose a generic 1024x768 LCD, and VESA/radeon chipset.Problems with X are unlikely to be kernel related, but the DVD might be. Maybe you need to use the ide-scsi cd driver, done with a kernel append line at boot time. I'll hazard a guess and say the ethernet is one either tulip or 8139too. I may be wrong, but try modprobe tulip and/or modprobe 8139too then ifconfig -a and see if eth0 is there. It might be something else, but it's worth trying.
Hope some of that helps.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
And how exactly is this better than "K3b (cd burning program)"
You obviously have never used any semi-recent version of KDE. All KDE programs have short description right beside the name in the K-menu.
But then you just have a look at the lilo manual and see:
/boot/boot.b without running the map
LI The first stage boot loader was able to load the second stage boot
loader, but has failed to execute it. This can either be caused by a
geometry mismatch or by moving
installer.
and
0x01 "Illegal command". This shouldn't happen, but if it does, it may
indicate an attempt to access a disk which is not supported by the
BIOS. See also "Warning: BIOS drive 0x may not be accessible"
in section "Warnings".
"Is it friday yet?"
Well, first off, the link is generally called "Nero Burning ROM", which gives a good impression that it's what you'd want to "burn" a CD-"ROM".
In some languages, ROM is the name of the Italian city you probably know as Rome, which Nero did actually burn down. It's a nice play on words, but there are plenty of people who won't make the link between that and writing data onto an optical disk.
-- Steve
If you want to burn a CD, you need to look in the menu under Archiving/CD-burning, there you'll find the CD-burning programs that are installed. This migth be one, or it migth be more, depending on your choises during installation.
It's probably not a stretch to have a novice user guess that the program located as: Archiving/CD-burning/eroaster is some sort of cd-burning program, same for Archiving/CD-burning/k3b
Sure "k3b" alone isn't going to tell anyone anything, but the fact that it's placed where it is will help a lot.
Actually, the normal procedure is even simpler, you don't go looking for k3b at all. Instead you simply use your normal file-browser to look for files or directories you want to burn. When you found them, you rigth-click on them and select "Burn data-cd" from the context-menu.
I've found it initially difficult (particularly with Open Office), but I'm now fine, and find using Outlook less pleasant than using Thunderbird.