Debian Install problems (Xserver related)

Chaos-Engine

Hiya
I've tried several times to install Debain on my machine as a Dual boot.
So far i've got the dual boot successfully working

Windows 2000 installed first on its own partition with 30GB and then i install Debain 3.0 r1 (I have CDs 1,2 and 3).
I install the bf24 flavour
I have LILO working fine

I config the system to the best of my knowledge but always come up with 3 fundemental problems:

1. I have a Microsoft USB mouse and can't get it working(what option is it?)
2. I have a Creative GeForce 3 and have fatal errors(according to Linux) with the Xserver.
3. I am subscribed to IrishBroadband and don't know how to set up my network connection. It should be like any local area network really I just don't have a sufficent knowledge of the command-line linux as of yet to set it up so i can apt-get when needed...

To help solve this problem I'll probably download the CD 4 (bf24) CD soon... Still i feel that this will not solve my problem with the Xserver...
here is my system read out off the top of my head:

CPU: AMD Athalon 2200XP
MEMORY: 256MB DDR 333MHz
Video Card: Creative GeForce 3 Ti200
Sound Card: SB Live Value
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X(which has on-board sound, Firewire, LAN, S/ATA, RAID and a few other niceitise
Mouse: MS USB explorer

that should do it

Any advice would be much appreciated... I need to get my system up and running Linux asap

Chaos-Engine

Basically my problem is I can't get any Xwindows working and I need an XWindows client as my knowledge of Cmd-Line is limited

fisty

use xf86config

or go into /etc/X11/

and manually edit the XF86config file

Capt'n Midnight

The HW detection & GUI setup on the Knoppix CD is quite good.
So try it , examine the working config and then use it for your install.. - check the options on F2 - you can choose other GUI's

[CrimsonGhost]

I had a similar problem. What I tracked it down to was the nv driver that came with 3.0r1 only supported up to early Geforce 2 cards. And it baulked when trying to start X with my GF4. The solution would have been to connect to the net and get an updated driver.

Unfortunately I ran into problems there. I would connect (dial-up) to the net, and the modem would stay connected, but all network traffic was going through my NIC. I tried lots of stuff, including no initialising the nic on startup but couldn't get the connection work. So I gave up and installed mandrake 9.1 instead. It's the dogs b0ll0x.

ssh

Edit /etc/network/interfaces to set up your network card. I think "man interfaces" should tell you.

You can set up the network once per boot by doing:

ifconfig eth0 ip.add.re.ss netmask 255.255.whatever.

The graphics stuff is nasty. Get yourself one of the kernels via apt-get and get the kernel headers for it too. Then apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src and nvidia-glx-src.

untar the two tarballs it puts in /usr/src/
build the nvidia-glx stuff (dpkg-buildpackage)

cd /usr/src/linux

make-kpkg modules_image

answer the nice questions.

dpkg -i /usr/src/nvidia*

edit your XF86config according to
the stuff on nvidia's webpage.

load the module and then restart the X server.

Easy? No, but then it wouldn't be debian, would it? :-)