Just freezes up
 

Hello,

I just not to long ago switched to Linux mandrake 9.1. I used it for about 2 weeks and got tired of the freeze ups. I could be surfing the web or chatting or just playing a game and the screen would just turn into lines going up and down and would freeze. Someone told me when it first happened it was a ram issue to use another wm so I switced to gnome tryed icewm and the same thing in both. Now as far as choices I like gnome. I have a intel celeron 450mhz,128mb ram,ethernet cable,creative sound card (no probs there) Trident 9750 video card. I went back to windows to solve it b/c I had things to do and needed the computer. I really liked linux other then that fact. I had done my homework before picking a distro and mandrake seemed right. I do notice when I did run linux it was using 90% of my ram but I did have swap set up. Can someone please help so I can escape the clutches of microsoft.

Thanks in advance

A wild guess:

If you have an AMD processor, sometimes you can have conflicts between ram and AGP. Pass mem=nopentium to the kernel and see if that fixes the vid problems.

# Find CPU specifications
cat /proc/cpuinfo

Gentoo news article

Another possibility is you may need a driver for your vid card.

# Configuring X
Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO - video cards
The Linux XFree86 HOWTO
Configuring XFree86 for a Non-Specific Linux Distribution
Common X configuring tools:
Mandrake - XFdrake
You may have these tools:
XF86Setup
XFree86 -configure
Xconfigurator
xf86cfg
xf86config
xconf
ATI Linux drivers
If you need the nVidia driver, you want the Linux IA32 driver

# Mandrake links
Mandrake home page
Mandrake Users website
Easy urpmi config for Mandrake
urpmi mini-HOWTO
Easy software management: Red Carpet
Maximum RPM
rpmfind
You didn't install the developmental packages? As root, command:
urpmi gcc
An Introduction to the Midnight Commander. You can install it by commanding:
urpmi mc
Midnight Commander home page