I am about ready to go pay for another copy of Windows. How can anyone call Ubuntu the easiest free linux for beginners? It took me 48 hours just to play videos and Mp3- sort of- and I've yet to get my WinTV USB2 to work at all. Trying to install the TV somehow messed it up, so now Xine plays only the audio for my videos and pictures are a blue screen. Part of the time the various audio players i'm trying to use complain about not being able to access my sound card, or something like that. Is there no form of installer for ubuntu, so that I can download one file that contains all the neccesary componets to reinstall Xine correctly? No similar system for the WinTV drivers? When I can get something working in Ubuntu, it's without understanding what i'm doing at all, just copying commands from someone's tutorial. There must be an easier free linux, or i'm missing something in ubuntu.

aaak! Just finished posting that, logged out and logged in as root, and now Xine works again for some reason!

All I want to do is internet, videos/music, and TV DVR stuff. I even went and got a different TV card that I thought would be better supported. Someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Before giving up, try other distros. I would recommend Suse 10 and Mandriva 2006 because they have very good hardware support. You could also try posting your questions on ubuntuforums.org, they seem to have a lot howtos and solutions to common problems.

ok, I got three mandriva .iso's going... I have been strung along by Ubuntu long enough, and this is probably worth the trouble. I just hope Ubuntu is enough to burn the CDs!

If you have the possibility set Mandriva up on some extra partitions and do not delete Ubuntu. In case you dislike Mandriva you wouldn't have to start from the very beginning again. This is I think a good idea for nearly every newbie to have one "stable" configuration and one with the same or another distro, on which you can do experiments and try to tweak and install new things.

With Ubuntu, one problem is that it is a minimal install which encourages the user to get the files s/he needs after install. It can sometimes be easier with distribution which install everything. A heavy, somewhat bloated system where things work are sometimes just an easier approach. If you are a beginner, that would be it, if you have the HD space for it.

I'm all about the bloating. I appreciate your advice, titopoquito, I wouldn't have thought to do that, even though I've got more HD than I need. I found this morning that i'm out of CD-Rs, but I have a few DVD-Rs, so I've gone and downloaded the DVD .iso for Mandriva. Anyone know an easy way for me to burn this? I never got Ubuntu to play DVDs, but I could open them and look at the contents, so I guess that's the player's fault. I do indeed have a DVD burner, it worked under windows.

You can use k3b or gnomebaker to burn the isos as cd images.

I have gnomebaker installed and I right clicked the .iso and it gave me the option to burn.. don't know if that's due to gnomebaker. Anyway, I only got it to work on DVD-RW, so I hope that boots. Advice to any newbies struggling with Ubuntu, take the word of all the people out there who say it's unsuitable... it's just not worth trying to hack through it.

Edit several days later: Newbies, read through the next page of this thread before deciding, ubuntu has suddenly become easier with Automatix, and i'm sticking with it.

Whilst ubuntu is a good distro, I think its hyped up so much and many newbies are not exploring other distros because everyone seems to recommend Ubuntu these days.

You also might want to try PCLinuxOS. Its a single cd distro that is also a LiveCD, meaning you can boot it and give it a try before installing. All the multimedia apps are already included.

I don't have a tv card, but it works great with my GForce 5500 video card.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/

i second PCLinuxOS its probably what you want since it plays formats like mp3/wmv/avi etc out of the box.

For quite a few years, Mandriva played the role that Ubuntu does now - no. 1 on Distrowatch and the suggested distribution for beginners. It is still a good suggestion. I understand that many people have experiences issues with PCLinuxOS.

The original post said:
"....It took me 48 hours just to play videos and Mp3..."

You should know that this is not the fault of Ubuntu or any other free distro. Most multimedia formats like mpeg and mp3 are proprietary and not free (as in speech) and cannot be distributed on a free Linux distro. Most of the larger distros have a paid for version that includes a lot of proprietary software and avoid this problem.

It probably took you 47 hours and 45 minutes to work out what to do and 15 minutes to do it. Linux can be like that when you start. This will tell you what to do http://ubuntuguide.org/#codecs You will have the same problem with Mandriva. I am not biased, I use them both

ZB

I actually went through that whole page installing all the modules and codecs and packages... A lot of things that ought to work still don't. I am assuming w32codecs package is supposed to add wma support to gstreamer, and yet Rhythmbox, XMMS, MPlayer, and Xine are all unable to play wmas. I double-checked by apt-getting w32codecs all over again, and it confirms that w32codecs is already the most recent version. Some of this stuff seems like it ought to make sense even when it doesn't.