Mervo

Right chaps - first off, thanks for the replies. As for my soundcard, well It's a surround sound card, it wasn't much to buy and I don't mind swapping to a SB if that will help solve my problem. I'll nip to PC world maybe later, and grab one. I did google for a few nights after work, to no avail, I found it was the 8738 chipset thingy but only found references to other cards. CMedia's website wasn't much help either. I love linux, Knoppix was the first OS I ever looked at, but with it being a bootable CD It didn't reign long on my machine. As for Mandrake, well it's very nice, I like it. I've not used Linux before - so far I think i have sussed out the RPM thing, - well I've added a few programs with it so I think I got the hang of it although I don't understand why I can't just downlaod an exe equivelent that installs itself - is this due to there being so many varieties of Linux? I have promised myself that I won't be going back to XP in a hurry, I can't give up on Mandrake, if sound as yet is my only problem - hopefully I'll sort that tonight with a new card... So just a couple of questions... Is there a way I can test GNOME out (It is a different desktop environment yeah??) cus right now i'm using KDE, and can't find a way of swapping to GNOME to see what it's like. Also, if I do swap to GNOME will I still be able to access the same programs as I have installed now? Thanks chaps

Heya folks, Well i finally decided to ditch Windows XP and have a good play with Linux. So, I formatted my drive and installed Mandrake 10 from scratch, leaving it to sort out the partitions itself etc. My problem is this: I am completely new to Linux, and am struggling to get my soundcard to work properly. I've searched the web all over for information on the Hercules Muse 5.1 DVD to no avail. I don't know where the drivers are kept, since Linux is completely different to XP. All I know is that on boot, aside the soundcard part, it says FAILED in red. I Can anyone please give me some sort of indication as to how i can start from scratch here, and get my sound working? XMMS pretends to load, but goes off after about 10 seconds of hogging the bar on the toolbar. If i go into the KDE settings and alter the soundcard driver it gives me options like: Select the audio device: Auto detect Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Enlightened Sound Daemon Network Audio Sound No Audio input/output Open sound System Threaded Open Sound System. Now what are these things? And why can't i see my soundcard? I am 100% baffled and really want to sort this problem out. The rest of Mandrake installed fine, but the sound, well I haven't got a clue where to start, I don't know what this "X" thing is, I don't even know how to swap from KDE to GNOME, heeelp!!!!!!!