Installation problems with Ubuntu and OpenSUSE - video modes and Wine

Q I decided to have another go with Linux and see if I can fiddle with Wine to get my finite element engineering packages to run. I tried installing Ubuntu 6.10 but the display flickered during boot-up even though I used Start With Low Resolution support and used F4 to change the resolution to what my monitor and video card supported. I think the frequency refresh of my monitor is 50Hz but Ubuntu 6.10 and Fedora both set it as 60Hz regardless of what resolution you choose. Then I tried to install Ubuntu 6.06, which did support the display and installed it without a hassle. I then tried to install Wine from source and ./configure suggested installing 'flex' which suggested installing 'm4' and then 'Bison' needed to be installed. Following all of these Wine returned with an error message during make. As I was not fully successful with Ubuntu, I tried installing Open SUSE 10.2 but got the following error message halfway through the installation:

"error occurred while creating the catalog
Cd///?devices=/dev/hdc source rejected by the user
Retry (yes) (no)"

Pressing Yes gave the message 'error occurred dvd/// source rejected by the user' I had been trying a dual boot installation with Windows XP already on the hard disk and am not sure if this is why the above error occurred.

A You are really going through a baptism of fire, but I'll try to address the various problems you have met. Most monitors handle a minimum 60Hz refresh rate, but you can edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file after installation to set it to suit your monitor. Look for the part that begins with Section "Monitor" and you'll see settings for HorizSync and VertRefresh. Change these to suit the specification of your monitor. Most distros provide a large selection of software in their repositories and do not expect typical users to have to install software from source. As a result, the necessary tools are not installed by default. Ubuntu offers two approaches to your Wine problem. You could install the build-essentials package, which installs all you need to install from source, including flex and m4. The simpler alternative is to add WineHQ's own repository to your list of package sources, then you can install the latest version with the package manager. Run these commands to add the repository:

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/
sources.list.d/edgy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

The first adds the repository's key to your list of trusted keys, the second adds the source list itself. This is for Ubuntu 6.10 - for 6.06 change edgy to dapper in the second command. Distro installers can occasionally get confused and fail to find the drive from which you are installing. This is usually when you have two optical drives; you boot the disc from one but it detects the other one and tries to load its data from that. In this case, the simplest solution is usually to boot from the other drive.

If this is not possible, such as when the first device is a CD drive and you are using a DVD, temporarily disconnecting the first device will avoid this error. You don't need to physically remove the cable - most BIOSes provide an option to disable individual devices. This particular problem only affects installation; you can actually reconnect the drive once everything else is working. A similar problem sometimes occurs when trying to install from a USB-connected DVD drive. It is also possible that you have a damaged disc. The easiest way to test it is to try booting it in another computer. You don't need to install to that computer, just boot up and see if the installer runs without the error.

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