Please Help Me!! Toshiba satellite A75 S231

[theredwind]

I'm a newbie to Unix/Linux. The problem I'm having is no video and no network/modem setups. I will give you my system spec. first:

Toshiba Satellite A75 S321 Mobile Pentium 4 548 3.33 ghz.
ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP video card
SUSE Linux 10.0

I did a full installment. I have 3 Linux boot options:
Linux 10.0
Linux 10.0 (XEN)
Linux Failsafe

When I boot to Linux 10.0 I get no video at all, but when I boot to Linux 10.0 (XEN) I get the "GUI", But still no network or modem setups. So can someone help me out!! I will tell you now what I see in the Linux 10.0 (XEN) boot.

In the VaST Control Center, I see:
Network Card Configuration Overview
Askey AR52 12 802.11abg NIC DHCP
Askey AR52 12 802.11abg NIC Not Configured
Toshiba America info RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ not Configured
Modem Card Configuration Overview
Toshiba America info IXP AC'97 modem modem Not Configured

So, can someone please help me out!! So I can use the Linux 10.0 boot and my wireless card.

[waterhead]

Without going into a detailed inspection of your hardware, I will first suggest that you use a newer version of Linux. Even though SuSE 10.0 is only a few years old, it will be missing drivers for newer hardware.

Also, Linux support for ATI graphics is rather poor. They have been working on it since AMD purchased ATI, but it still is lacking compared to the Linux nVidia driver. You can install the driver after the distro installation (aka: The Easy Way):
ATI - openSUSE

Or by downloading and compiling from ATI (aka: The Hard Way):
Drivers & Software

[gogalthorp]

You should not need the drivers for normally GUI operations only for 3D acceleration.

I'm not sure why you have XEN installed it is a virtual machine kernel and should not be installed normally. ie you had to go out of your way to install it.

I agree with waterhead you should try a newer version.

[theredwind]

I want to say thanks for your help with this matter. I will give the easy way a try, and also look for a newer linux. Can you tell me which linux to get.

[gogalthorp]

It is a matter of taste which Linux you like. Each As it own virtues and drawbacks. The big 4 for newbies are Ubuntu, RedHat, Manderva, and Suse. There are numerous others derived from these. Such as Kubuntu for those that prefer the KDE desk top over the Gnome desktop. There are distros that are more geared to the experienced user that wants to live at the cutting edge. Like Gentoo, Debian and Slackware. And that is just scratching the surface.

You were installing 10.0 which is something like 5 years old. The Newest version is 11.0 also 10.2 and 10.3 are still availabel I believe.

You can get it here

openSUSE.org

[theredwind]

Thanks again, I'm going to try to download the 11.0 SUSE Linux. I like the one I had so I will get the newer one.