Newbie with SuSE questions (was: Ok, Now what?)

[lazman]

Ok, here's the deal. I'v been running a windows box sence windows 3.11 I'm running windows 2000 at the moment. It's really been working great for me so I seen no need to upgrade to XP. Now I see all this hype about Longpockets, erm I mean Longhorn. So now i'm thinking to myself that if I don't upgrade then eventually i'm going to run into trouble with software eventually. Then I get to looking at the prices for XP to get some idea of the cost to upgrade the 2 desktops and a laptop to longsocks when it comes out. To be honest I don't want to spend a grand on upgrading an OS just so I can run a $49.95 game or other software that probably won't run on the win2k box anymore. So now i'm looking at my options. Mac, or Linux. With the Mac I have to buy new computers so that's not what i'm looking for at all. I'm thinking to myself that Linux is my best bet.

So, here I am, the guy that does a little coding, website dabeling, and tweaking of the windows OS and the wife that reads mail, chat, and play games. The kids that just starting out on a computer and play around on kid sites.

Ok, I decide that Suse is the best choice because it's gotten the higest rating on the best OS for the newbie to linux (on this board). I downloaded the dvd iso. Got it installed great to a blank hdd. I chose the Kdesktop which i'm not sure is the best choice. It came with firefox wich looks great! Everything except the printer installed and is working. Everything is looking good! I decide to take it around the block and see what it will do.

I fire up firefox and go check out my local news page. I try to view the video feed they got up there and I get a message that a plugin needs to be installed. Come to find out. It needs MPlayer 10 to play it. No sweat right? All I got to do is find the MPlayer for linux or the plugin. Here it is 2 days later and I'v still not got it working.

I'm thinking to myself, ok this is a program that is from M$ so I'm probably not ever going to find something that will play it. No sweat, I'll just have to pass up half of the video's on the net like I did when I was on dialup.

Ok, let's see what kind of games there are out there for the wife to play. Then it starts getting really hairy! I found a neat looking game to check out. I went to download it and I get the options of, 386, 486, 586, x64. After a little research I figure out that it's the processor that the numbers are refuring to. Ok I need the 586 file. I download it, unzip (was rar i think), then I start looking for the setup.exe, install.exe or something like that. To my amazement there was none. Now what? Well It's a fresh install so let's just start clicking on stuff. I hit a file that had .rpm behind it and it opened up Yast. All kinds of red flags when up then! Dependency's! Ok so I need more software to make this thing run. No sweat! Let's just go get em. Then while I was trying to find that stuff I ran across something called apt. I still havn't figured out what this is. It looks like a program that will install other programs or something.

So now i'm stuck. I havn't a clue on which of the 10 or so rpm files to download to get apt installed. I'v still not got that video thing working. And the printer just isn't going to get done because the mfg doesn't have a linux driver for it.

So, what now!?

What I really need is a good webpage or book that will ease the transition from windows (unzip, click the exe, and your done) to linux (unzip, hope there's and rpm, download the dependency's [from where], then hope it works)

One other question I have is this as easy as it gets? This is the Linux for the noobs. True that everything installed great. But now I want some more software, like games, video players, (mplayer, real player) and the such. Maybe check out some of the other cool programs for linux that didn't come with Suse. I tried to get real player installed and working, I got it installed (I think) but it sure doesn't work.

Has anyone else been in this position? If so what did you do next? How did you find your way around the new world?

[ehawk]

You really have to be ready to do some reading. Google is your friend. You should always read the documentation that comes with your distribution, especially if you're a newbie. I just entered, "Suse documentation manual" into google, and the first hit was a very useful site, with e-book manuals for Suse:

http://elibrary.fultus.com/covers/technical/suse/guides/list.html

Once you get apt set up (with some good repositories) package installation is a breeze. Again, do a google search for apt and Suse.

[frimann]

For your codecs problems i would just install the: w32codec package from :http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=046
Allso there are forums dedicated to Suse sutch as :http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/forumdisplay.php?forumid=60

That could give quicker ansvers.

[lazman]

Thanks for the reply! As it happens I just found some info on the apt. I understand that it's basicly the same thing as Yast except that it will resolve the conflicts for you. The page also said that it might mess up the install or the boot loader when it was installing applications. They recomend you get into linux and know your way around before installing it on Suse. So for the time being i'll just stick to yast (I think).

The reading isn't a problem. I read ALOT of stuff to learn how to get around in and make windows do all the tricks. I'm sure linux can do ALOT more tricks. It's just going to take some time to get use to it.

My main concern at the moment is to get the wife into linux. She sees me having problems just viewing things we view every day. So she's like "your not putting that on my computer!" But if i can get it to work like she is use to then she won't have such a problem with it.

Again, Thanks for the reply and the link!

[lazman]

I installed the codecs pakage with no problems but when I click to play the video firefox still says there are no known plugins for that file. Which is an asx file. They say that you need windows mplayer 9 to play it. I seen on another site that someone installed mplayer on linux but I can't seem find a download for it anywhere.

What i'm not getting is that mplayer files are all over the web. If you can play them on linux then why not install by default the software you need to play them?

[pezplaya]

you may want to check out mplayerplug-in. It will allow you to play embedded media in your browser (firefox).

http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/

[Parcival]

The "problem" with SuSE is that you shouldn't download software from the web and try to install it as this isn't the newbiefriendliest way of how to do it.

Generally, when you find an interesting piece of software, you should make it your habit to fire up YaST first and check if it's already in SuSE's huge package selection. Chances are high it is. Once you have found it, you can install it with a click of the mouse and YaST will resolve all dependencies.

I suggest to install applications manually only if you don't find the same program (or a smiliar) in YaST because another problem is that SuSE won't update your application automatically, so it gets the messier the more software you install manually.

BTW, please post with a better thread title next time and read the posting guidelines. This time I edited your title, next time it will get locked. ;)

[wiseblud]

Okay been down that road about two weeks ago. It really shouldn't be that hard to get media players to play files, yet SUSE has horrible multimedia support. Installing APT in SUSE was even more difficult, it seems like it would work if it would get installed, but I had updated libraries that the APT program couldn't use. I hate to say it but I gave up on SUSE and tried practically every other distro. There were two which allowed me to watch files, and they are (K)ubuntu and Mepis. (K)ubuntu has very good support to get everything working, just download the ISO, go to this site: http://ubuntuguide.org and they will get you straightened out.

Mepis was very interesting and good as well, but it seemed it would take some tweeking to get WMA files to play.

There is a difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu, Ubuntu is based on gnome (very clean but hard to configure stuff) and Kubuntu is based on (KDE real pretty). Good luck with a problem I could not solve. It just seems that Multimedia support is an important thing in a distro, and isn't just used for pr(0)n. I know have a very clean interface with KDE that does everything my windows partition does.

[lazman]

Parcival, I admit I am guilty of not reading the guidlines. I have read them and thanks for setting me straight and not locking the thread! :)

The main problem I think i'm having is just being a noob to linux. I have been a windows guy for so long and have done some advanced stuff on it as well as some coding. I didn't realize until last night that everything about linux is so diffrent. I did try to install the mplayer so that I could use the mplayerplugin that pezplaya had suggested. I downloaded what I thought was the correct version and proced to compile and install it only after the rpm resulted in confilicts. After all that was done. It still doesn't work. It gives permission problems. Wich didn't suprise me much because it took me 45 min to figure out how to copy files over to /usr/.... I was getting the same permision problems right there. That should have given me a clue that I was too clueless to do it corectly :P

I did get it installed however and now it doesn't work. Now I have no idea on how to remove it or fix it! I looked in YaST and did not find the program in there.

I remember when I first installed windows 95. I messed with it and messed with it until I broke it (wasn't hard) then I had no idea how to fix it. So I just formated and reinstalled and tried again until I figured it out. I feel like i'm back at that same point with Linux now except everything is more complex. There's not just one OS there are endless releases it seems. And until I figure how how to set it all up so that everything I want to do with it works then I have to duel boot with windows 2k.

I'm thinking that the best solution now is to just format and reinstall. One problem I see with doing that is the boot manager. Is it going to mess up if I try another disto, or even use the same one again?

wiseblud, Thank you for your responce. I think my next try will be with Kubuntu. Perhaps this will solve my problem.

[paj12]

If you're looking for multimedia support in SuSE, you should know that it is broken. There are certain license issues associated with formats like WMV, MP3, or DivX. But rather than simply not include them, like some other distros do, SuSE has put multimedia packages in that are so ridiculously crippled as to be useless. There is hope, though.

When looking for software SuSE doesn't have on their CD's, check this site (http://packman.links2linux.org/) first. It has a ton of outside software and it's all specially compiled to install problem-free into SuSE.

For multimedia, you want to uninstall the SuSE versions and grab the full versions of the following packages:

xine-lib (http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=124),
kaffeine (http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=325), and
kaffeine-mozilla (http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=430)

Kaffeine-mozilla is optional, but it will play media from within Mozilla or Firefox.

Hope everything works out for you and you continue to stick it out with Linux. It is definitely worth it. :)

[afaiq]

lazman - if you are still looking for plugins for firefox - the simplest way is to download firefox plugins, extensions, themes etc. is from within firefox. Its either in Tools, or Preferences menu in firefox (I forget..). Says something like 'Get Themes' or 'Get Plugins'.
Firefox will download and install all the necessary components.

My advice - start slow, stay with YaST (as Parcival said)

[lazman]

afaiq, this is the whole problem. Firefox doesn't find a plugin for the asx file. It will however take you to microsoft.com if you click on manual install.

paj12, I'v done as you suggested and removed the apps that installed with SuSE and installed the ones you provided. I was really hoping this would fix it all up for me. I can now play the file if I download it but it will still not play in the browser like I was hopeing for.

I installed,

xine-lib,
kaffeine, and
kaffeine-mozilla

and also had to install, Speex (http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=338) because xine-lib said it was a conflict. Everything went well on the install. No errors, no conflicts.

However on the plugins inside firefox there still is nothing there. Am I missing a step or something?

[Parcival]

Have you already consulted the Firefox FAQ, plug-ins section (http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq#plugins)?

About that advanced Windows user and Linux being different: I've been there, I started exactly the same way. It takes a while to get the feeling for Linux. Two years after I had started with Linux SuSE got too boring for me. :)

The software you compile will never show up in your YaST's software section. When you compile something, this is a very lowlevel task that leaves out YaST's package handling. SuSE is easy to use for newbies because it assumes you don't wanna do fancy advanced stuff like compiling packages but use YaST's point 'n click menu instead. If you want ease of use, stick with YaST with whatever you do. If you wannt to get your hands dirty and learn a lot real fast, keep compiling. :D

[afaiq]

Originally posted by Parcival
The software you compile will never show up in your YaST's software section. When you compile something, this is a very lowlevel task that leaves out YaST's package handling.

Actually, you can create a package of your compiled software, using something like checkinstall (http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/) and install it manually using an 'rpm -i' command. This makes your custom compiles visible to YaST and makes future upgrades helluva lot easier. But, I am sure you already knew that ;-)

[lazman]

Well, I still can't get the plug-in to work for firefox. I can however tell firefox to open the file using kaffeine. It would be nice to be able to get it to work in the browser tho.

I like the idea of being able to compile the programs that I want then installing them. I still have the mplayer on my system (somewhere) I have no idea how to remove it or where it's even at! I'm guessing that it will not hurt anything to just leave it there. But then again I run into the problem of the next app that I want to compile and install. Once I decide that I don't want it anymore then how do I remove it? Where are the programs stored at? Is there and uninstaller somewhere becides YaST? These are the kind of questions i'm down to now.

As you and I said we where really good on windows. I'm sure you got the same thing I did. When someone is having trouble with their computer they call you. I want to be that good in linux. I know it's going to take some time but I will get there. The idea of using YaST is ok for starters just to try to get everything working. But then I want to play too. Why be in the playground and only use the bench? haha

Thanks for the info and the help. I did check out the firefox plugin page and a few links off of it but I still didn't get anywhere :/

[irlandes]

Are your plug-ins in .xpi format? If they are, set up windows so you can click and drag the .xpi file from where it was downloaded, and simply drop it into the foxfire window anywhere, and it installs itself automatically, close foxfire and open it again, and .xpi is running. If that plug-in is in .xpi format it is the easiest thing to install I have ever seen.

[Parcival]

Originally posted by afaiq
Actually, you can create a package of your compiled software, using something like checkinstall (http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/) and install it manually using an 'rpm -i' command. This makes your custom compiles visible to YaST and makes future upgrades helluva lot easier. But, I am sure you already knew that ;-)

Yes, I heard about that possibility, but AFAIK you still create the RPM first and install it second, so I figure that's not exatcly the "traditional" way of compiling and installing things. :)