Please Pardon My Ignorance

[kenc3]

As I mentioned before, I am entirely new to Linux. I have Mint6 installed now.
I can get to the terminal but from there I am lost as to how to provide the information you request.
I tried to find a list of hardware on my computer but just get a command not recognized or some other message.
I do not know how to get the information from the terminal to the forum either.
I am logged in to Mint6 now and working from there with the low screen resolution. I plan to stay here for a few more hours. I will be back. I am going to download some software for my OS.

[elija]

No problem kenC3,

When you are in the terminal you type the commmands given. For example to find the hardweare you have you type "lspci" without the quotes and then press enter. If you get a command not found, try "/bin/lspci" again without the quotes.

To get the information into the forum, you click and hold the right mouse button and drag it over the text. What you have selected should be obvious - on my Mint terminal it gets a garish green background. Then right click and select "Copy" from the menu", you can then paste that into the forum.

If this isn't clear, please let me know.

[kenc3]

This is what I got. I think I need to change my screen resolution to 1024x768. That is what I have on Windows.

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 651 Host (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 25)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW323 (rev 61)
00:0a.0 Communication controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. HSF 56k HSFi Modem (rev 01)
00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5500] (rev a1)

is this what you need?

[elija]

Looking at this I can see you have an nVidia graphics controller

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5500] (rev a1)

This means you'll need to install the nVidia drivers to get the most out of it. These instructions are based on Mint5 but they should be fine for Mint6

Click the Menu button and then select Control Centre. This will bring up Mints configuration tools. In there you will see something called "Hardware Drivers", click on that and enter your password when asked.

This will open the Hardware Drivers Window. In here there should be a line that says something like "NVidia Accelerated graphics driver". If it is there and the checkbox under the enabled column is not checked, click on it to tick it and it should download and install the drivers for you. (That may not happen until you click close - it's been a while and I can't remember)

Once the drivers have been installed, make sure you have saved any work and press Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to restart the graphical environment. This should load the nVidia driver and sort out the resolution.

If the driver isn't listed in the Hardware Drivers Window, we will have to download and install the driver from nVidia, which is a bit more involved but not that bad.

[kenc3]

I installed the driver that comes with Mint6 the last time and it just gave me two more low resolutions that made it worse. I almost couldn't get it back uninstalled because the screen was so large and my mouse wouldn't go down.
I tried going to the NVIDIA site and maybe I didn't do it right but, they stopped and said that they didn't support Linux. (This was the last time.) I am on the Mint now so it may be different at their site.

[kenc3]

You won't believe this but when I went to the NVIDIA site this time they gave me the driver and instructions on how to download and install it. I am downloading it now and will attempt the install and let you knkow how it goes.

[kenc3]

I have the download on my computer but cannot seem to get it installed. I tried the command they gave me and terminal doesn't recognize it.
I tried to open it and I was told I need some program to open it. Now I am trying to install either Gvim or Vim or something to open it.

[elija]

OK, so you have downloaded the file.

1. open the terminal
2. use the cd command to make your way to where the file is
3. enter "sh filename" and press enter

[kenc3]

How do I find out what file the download is in? It is sitting on the top of my desktop right now.
I am not familiar with how to figure out which dir or which ones I have. How do I do that?

[elija]

The desktop can be found by opening a terminal and typing "cd Desktop" without the quotes. The capital D is important as Linux files are case sensitive