a pure newbie

[Amiri]

hi every body i have installed mandriva 2007 on my old PC but i have ecountered many problems
1-in a program like open office when i press the space somthing like a dot appears
2-how can i type Farsi in linux
3-how can i run programming languages like C in linux and how can i download them
4-how can i connect to the internet
5-where can i download Farsi fonts and how to istall them
and finally can anyone introduce me a downloadable cookbook for linux

[daark.child]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Mandriva 2007 was released sometime in 2006 and I don't think its still supported. It maybe better to get the latest release which is 2010. If you run the Control Center, go to the package management section and search for Farsi, you will see a list of packages and their descriptions. Install the packages you need. As for C, you need to install gcc and supporting libraries from within the package management section. The suggestions above assume you have a working internet connection or you installed from the Mandriva Free DVD. If you installed from the Mandriva One cd, you will need to get the internet connection working first.

What kind of internet connection do you have?

[Cabhan]

Well first off, as daark says, Mandriva 2007 isn't really supported anymore. You would be better off upgrading to a more recent version of Linux.

Having said that, I would advise against Mandriva. My reason for this is that as a new user, you are better off with a distribution that is somewhat more popular, and which has more community support. These days, Ubuntu Linux is probably the most popular distro, with Fedora Core second (based on Distrowatch's reports). Mandriva is still used, I'm sure, but it is not quite as popular, and most people know a bit less about it.

Having said that, assuming that you were to switch to Ubuntu, I see a setting for Persian language support under Language Settings. I do not know if the Persian language and Farsi are exactly the same (I know that they are at least similar), but in my experience, enabling a language in Ubuntu's language settings takes care of setting up your keyboard layouts and installing fonts. It might be worth a look.

As daark also says, you don't really install a programming language; you instead install a compiler for a programming language. gcc is our basic C compiler, g++ is for C++, and all of these compilers are generally available through your distro's package management.

[eTech97]

I agree that you should download the latest Mandriva version.

As far as different Linux distribution. The choice is completely up to you. One thing that can be said is that the distribution that you start with will almost certainly will not be the same as you end up with. And many distro hop throughout there lifetime. And many run multiple distro's at the same time.

Keep in mind that each distribution has a different default window manager(ie. KDE, Gnome, etc..) Which you will become more familiar with and will develop a preference for. These are not the only window managers, they are arguably the major player's.

I ran five different distro's before I chose openSUSE as my favorite, and have been running it since 10.x, with the KDE desktop. That is my preference. I run several other distro's and Microsoft products in Virtual terminals as it is part of my support job.

Cheers!

[oz]

and finally can anyone introduce me a downloadable cookbook for linux

Welcome to the forums!

Not sure this is what you mean, but it is "the linux cookbook":

The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use - Table of Contents

If you can't find it in a pdf format, you can choose the "save page as" option in your web browser. A google search for "free linux ebooks" will reveal a number of downloadable ebooks that might be of interest to you.

Hope you'll enjoy running Linux.