Mandrake 10 install on 5680 (instructions)

For those of you who are members of the mandrakeclub the new Mandrake 10 release is out. I DLed and installed it over the weekend. DL is via bittorrent and despite some bitching from others I didnt have a problem with it - using a product called azureus (see sourceforge page) under Linux.

(Ok yes I know mandrake is a "newbie" linux - but I am an old and cranky sysadmin and dont have time to BS around with compiles and "hardcore" linux distr anymore. Just tweaking my systems kernel and recompiling necessary SW takes me 6+ hours)

Step 1) DL and burn to CD
Step 2) Put disk 1 into CD tray
Step 3) Reboot from CD
Step 4) Go through install procedure
Step 5) Run Linux

Its that easy. Mandrake 10 comes with several 3rd party drivers and the 2.6.3 kernel. It detected everything I had hooked up - from my printer to my scanner and best of all it has the prism54 drivers so my wireless card was detected and configured out of the box and works flawlessly. It even had the option to setup WEP etc at install time.

The only thing that is missing is the ATI drivers which can be dled and installed easily from the ATI site.

For those of you getting into linux - or like me just want it to run without BSing about. I recommend Mandrake 10.

(Of course I recommend doing a custom kernel once you are up and running).

Thats just about the size of it. As I said the only thing I HAD to manually do was the 3d ati drivers. If you didnt want 3d then you could even skip that step

Nothing is idiot proof - they keep building better idiots

Couple of questions

1) Do you have the official 10.0 release or one of the betas
2) Did you get the 4th CD which has all the 3rd party stuff on it
3) At install time in the final review did you go into configure network

Well if you have one of the betas that might be an issue. The betas tend not to have all the stuff of an official release. I definately would DL the 4th CD if you can get it. Ok failing all that head on over to prism54.org - the installation of the driver is pretty easy and they have the firmware you need there as well. One last thing you might try is running mcc (under X if you can) click on networks and then manage connections - see if you can see the wireless card there.

You use the ATI desktop drivers firegl ones. Do not worry about the fail message from eth0 it gets started later at internet conection time.

Ok to get the wireless card work (oi I hate writing docs) First you need to make sure your kernel has firmware_class loaded. To do this simply do an lsmod and you should see a line like

firmware_class prism54

You can also do a dmesg and look for detection of the wireless card.

If your kernel has the firmware_class stuff then you are good (it should) if not then you need to recomplile the kernel to include it.
Once that is done

*) does "cat /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug" show something like "/sbin/hotplug"?

*) is /sbin/hotplug present?

Ok now head on over to prism54.com and get the firmware file - its linked off the main page. Install the file in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware and rename it isl3890. While on the prism54 site get the latest tarball and extract it somewhere. You dont need to patch your kernel simply make the package and then make install. This will copy the prism54.ko file into the correct location - you should then be able to do a modprobe prism54 and have your card recognised.

After that its a simple matter of using the mcc network config package to configure the card.

Now I cannot say this enough - all of this documentation is on the prism54.com site - please please please please please please please please RTFM. I can rewrite the proceedure for you but its not as good as reading the manual. Also you are using a dled beta/community version of the mandrake 10.0 release - as such it is not complete. if you are desperate to get linux running then I suggest forking over 60 bucks and joining the club - it helps Mandrake keep developing a good product and gives you early access to the releases and also to the forums which are very helpful. If you cant afford the 60 bucks then simply wait for a few weeks for the public release of the 10.0 version. I wrote the review so that people would know about the ease of MD10.0 not as a suggestion that everyone run off and install it that day when it hasnt been released.