Help a stupid Linux noobie please :(

Okay... First time using Linux. I recently purchased (laugh if you will, but I'm tired of virii, fucking General Protection Faults, memory paging errors, the Blue Screen of Death, and other windows-specific errors) a copy of MandrakeLinux 10 off of their site. I must say I am impressed with it so far, the UI is pretty sophisticated.

I am running the KDE at the moment and I downloaded a more recent copy of WinE so I can play my Windows-based games (the fuckers can't make a Linux package for it!). First things first, how do I use this infernal command line? Now, don't get me wrong, I got quite accustomed to a command prompt... In 1991, when MS-DOS was still a popular operating system (haha). Anyways, I downloaded the RPM for the latest distribution of WinE and I can not FIND the fucking thing, and even if I could, I have NO IDEA HOW TO INSTALL IT! Same goes double for the GPU drivers, even though Linux has detected them, my output from the card to my monitor is so incredibly slow that I have a hard time believing it has been detected properly.

Can somebody help me, a somewhat helpless Micro$oft veteran, more easily move to Linux, and still be able to run Windows-based apps and games?

I promise the person to help me resolve this issue 7 years of the best sex ever. And please, for the love of God, don't PH this until I at least get SOME help. If I can at least get that, I honestly will not care WHAT happens to this gay noobie thread.

Thanks...?

Laguna

Just fucking use windows.

Arioch said:

Just fucking use windows.

No.

Anyways, so you're using an RPM based distro. To install it, you'll need some sort of RPM tool. Slackware (what I use) doesn't touch 'em, but I believe you install RPMs with a program called "rpm". From KDE, open up Konsole, type "rpm" (no quotes). Try "rpm -ivh package name". If it comes up with dependancy errors, that means you're missing something the RPM needs and you need to find another one with it. Doesn't always happen, but it has to me a few times (XML Parser for Perl comes to mind for LogJam, the POS...)

After you install it, try just typing wine.

If you need help, or want to learn your way at the terminal (command prompt thing), feel free to IM or PM (an aim IM is preferred) me anytime.

EDIT: Oh, and what kind of video card?

yea i have of late began to prefer linux. however for high end gaming i am still somewhat bound to windows.

hopefully you have a good graphics card. preferably a NVidia or common ATI. go by chipset here. example i had a ASUS graphics card a while back, but it was the geforce2 GTS chipset. so i used nvidia drivers.

nvidia drivers have given me the least hassle and the best preformance. now dont get me wrong ATI is just as good. however their drivers are lacking.

first you need to get use to how stuff is done in linux. the command line is extreamly powerful, use it often. however it is different. one main diffence is it is muiltitasking (SP) DOS isnt. its hard to grasp how this works until you begin to work with it.

another important thing is compiling. i avioded this like a pleague, because i dont know C or any compiled languages. however once i did it i was blown away by how easy it was to do. even if i dont understand its finer points and details. i have been useing linux as my primary OS the last 2 years, off and on sence about 2000.

linux is not gonna come natrualy, what computer program and system does? ironicly given what i have seen it is just as easy to learn linux as it is windows if you have never used a computer. however like any system you need to spend time with it to learn it.

i would consider my self a novice user. i know all the basic and i am starting to get into more advanced stuff. like building my own kernel. however there is a great deal for me to learn.

mandrake is a good place to start, suse is as well. i use suse because for the most part everything is configured and ready after install. i just have to clean and custimize instead up updateing and such.

linux is getting better for a gameing OS, but still not quite there. given a few more years it could very well over take MS as the prime platform for programing and games, as well as home and office use.

there is no quick way to learn it. you just need to sit down and play with it. and like anthing in computers you learn the most when trying to get something to work or when something fails

now if i could only get use tot his new keyboard

Arioch said:

Just fucking use windows.

What he said.

DJ_Haruko said:

EDIT: Oh, and what kind of video card?

I am using an ASUS V9980 / Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256 Meg AGP8X blah blah blah...

Summarily, it's a fucking $500 video card, and thank God NVIDIA POSTS LINUX DRIVERS ON THEIR WEBSITE!

I just recently obtained a copy of TransGaming's CEDEGA which, at it's latest version, supports games using the DirectX9 API and Direct3D9 functions.

Thank God.

[EDIT]:

When I found out my primary hard drive had contracted like the fucking 12th BOOT SECTOR VIRUS, I decided I'd had it with Windows. THAT is why I am preferring Linux.

Also, Linux, if I am informed correctly (and I very well may not be, I will not even ATTEMPT to pretend I know what I'm talking about) will run OPENGL-based games flawlessly on good video cards, since it is not a platform-specific API.

When Doom3 comes out, it is NEVER going on Windows XP.

Yes, I'll most likely reinstall XP again, or maybe repair my current version with a backup (it's a fucking bitch to install with other OS' installed), but I'll never ever EVER install another OpenGL based game on it, unless it will absolutely not run on XP.

I have NO IDEA HOW TO INSTALL IT!

Well duh, that's Linux you're using. Having a shiny "install" button that does everything automatically is considered bad design since that will limit the user's freedom. Besides, if the user can't figure out how to install it manually, he's probably too computer illiterate to be trusted with making the decision of whether the software should be installed at all.

And remember, if you about ask this in a Linux forum, you WILL get flamed for your lack of intelligence and ignorance of the obvious solution whatever it might be.

you are not gonna be able to play any directX game in linux. directX is windows, you will never see a version for linux.

wine might install the game but i dout it will run, and if it does i dout it will run well.

most, if not all, Id games work in linux.
UT, UT2003 and UT 2004 will run in linux.

doom III will be released for linux.

the only reason i keep windows is for games.

Laguna said:

When I found out my primary hard drive had contracted like the fucking 12th BOOT SECTOR VIRUS, I decided I'd had it with Windows.

Sounds like a personal problem to me. I haven't even SEEN a boot sector virus in a decade. (I also completely missed out on CiH, so YMMV)

plz to translating acronyms

SEEN = sensed electromagnetic emission narrate

I've never seen a boot sector virus. And what the hell are you doing with a 500 dollar video card on a linux box??

It says something about the boot sector having contracted a virus.

I don't know shit about virii, except that some will destroy your MBR and render all the data on your hard drive useless. It has not done any damage YET, but it most likely will.

By the way, this wasn't originally a Linux box... It was actually using Windows XP up until yesterday, and I can still dual boot with either one.

Thus, I bought the $500 video card for (at the time) Windows games.

In any case, I am having trouble, SERIOUS trouble getting my audio and video card configured properly.

Laguna said:

In any case, I am having trouble, SERIOUS trouble getting my audio and video card configured properly.

That's standard for Linux.

Modifying the boot sector of a hard drive isn't necessarily bad. You almost need to do it, in fact, to set up a proper dual-boot configuration with Windows and Linux.

Well, resizing partitions from NTFS and re-allocating them to Ext3 is understandable, but I actually formatted a drive with NO filesystem on it for Linux. I removed all partitions on it, including logical drives, and set aside 80 gigabytes of space for my Linux install.

I'm basically trying to figure out how to install my Nvidia Drivers and my Audigy 2 ZS drivers to Linux, which I know I need to find the ALSA equivalent (emu10k2 I think is the latest?). The problem is, like I said before, installing and testing the God damn thing.

Sephiroth said:

you are not gonna be able to play any directX game in linux. directX is windows, you will never see a version for linux.

wine might install the game but i dout it will run, and if it does i dout it will run well.

A number of DirectX games have worked under WINE for years. WineX/Cedega can even run DirectX 9 games such as Far Cry.

i'll have to look into wineX


anyways, you will need to modifiy the boot sector. however there is another way, a linux boot floppy.

nvidia drivers are easy to use

first off
downlaod them
then do a crtl + F1

then run the file in the command line.

unlike DOS the command line cant do everything as a standard user

you will need to be root, or log on as root
then type your root password
you are in as root
type "init 3" no quotes.
remeber linux IS case sensitive.
now the command line has many more functions than DOS. basic DOS like functions are there too, however abit different.

example, i want to get into a directory called files i would type "cd /files" note i use a slash instead of a back slash.

i forget which but to run the installer for nvidia drivers. you need to run its binnary file. should be somthing along the line of Nvidia.run well driver version and name.run

type "./nvidia.run"
or type "nvidia.run" i am really tired so its hard to remeber.


after it runs, run the utility for X. then it should work.

as for sound i dont know. ask around or look around.

like i said linux isnt gonna come to you in a day, a week or even a month

You might want to try the forums at the linux website. There the actual programers answer problems that you might have.

Well, now I've got everything up and running except for WinEx (Cedega 4.0 now). I didn't warez Cedega, so anybody wanting it will have to register at transgaming.com to get a legitimate copy (and be eligible for updates and such). There is a small fee of $5 to register.

A small word of warning, though...

The Nvidia GeForce FX5950 Ultra does not seem to work correctly without appending the following line to the "screen" string in your XF86Config-4 (or whatever kernel version you use):

Option "NoPowerConnectorCheck" "1"

What this does, is, for some reason when you try to log on to X, it will tell you your extra power connector (many newer FX 5900/5950 models utilize a secondary Molex Connector on the far back end of the PCB) is not plugged in (and it is, I checked it and ran it under Windows with no errors or video card performance decreases whatsoever) and will refuse to let you in to X. It will tell you if you think it is in error, to append said attribute to your "screens" options in your XFree86 configuration file.

I'm not sure if anyone else had this problem, since I'm running an ASUS V9980 card. In any case, it's worth noting if you own this GPU.

Heh, I'm learning Linux pretty fast for a (dumb) noobie.

Now I need to download Doomsday for Linux... If there is a port...

Will the folks at doomsdayhq.com ever port Doomsday (Including Kickstart, JDoom, JHexen, JHeretic) over to Linux?

I've got all this awesome shit up and running, and I still have problems finding a JDoom port for Linux, and WinE doesn't like JDoom either.

Dammit!