confusion: realplayer, firefox plugins. solution: synaptic?
 

i recently switched to ubuntu from windows. while on windows, i used my computer for web surfing, gaming, and some photoshop here and there. i know i can do the same on linux but there are a lot of obstacles in my way.

after the initial installation (which was very easy with ubuntu). i imported the stuff i backedup and everything was runnin smooth until i decided to check my myspace (yes i have one... is that shameful? :p ). i noticed while running it that the music player my friends profiles weren't playing along with band myspace profiles. thats when i figured i needed to install plugins to firefox. there's quite a bit of plugins out there (flash, shockwave, realplayer, adobe acrobat, etc). i decided to start by downloading realplayer (RealPlayer10GOLD.bin) i started the installation and it wouldn't install. after some searching through documentation, i learned about sudo and was able to have it installed. however, i was/am not familiar as to where i should have installed it. i figured, after glancing at the filesystem hierarchy standard, that /usr would be an ok place to install it because of how it resembles the purpose of "Program Files" back in windows. i thought that once installed it would take care of installing a realplayer plugin for firefox. i gave it a try on some test video clips and received "RTSP streams cannot be played yet".

in the end, it seems i extracted/installed a bunch of stuff into my /usr from the RealPlayer10GOLD.bin which didnt make improvements.

then i read about synaptic. this seems to be a really usefull tool for installing programs and such. i figured id be able to find and install plugins from there, but couldn't find firefox plugins anywhere in the search :(

although these problems make me miss the userfriendliness of windows, im not giving up linux. ive learned a lot on my own from this problem (sudo, extracting .bin, etc) and i know i will understand it all eventually. but any insight on this would be greatly appreciated! thanks for your time!

:newbie:

the_pheonix,
Hi, see you again,

please go to
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Main_Page
click links to ubuntu edgy or ubuntu dapper (depends your distro) then you will get very good guide.. go through the begining for setup repository properly 1st.

I would strongly recommend Automatix for a new Ubuntu user. Several programs install automatically, very easily with a few clicks. It will install programs such as Flash, Mplayer, W32 media codecs, DVD playback capability, Realplayer and several others.

Regardless, it sounds like you successfully installed Realplayer.

Places>Search for Files... Search for RealPlayer, make sure "look in folder" is set to File System. You should see a Folder somewhere called RealPlayer(for instance, I installed mine in Home/IndyGunFreak). In that folder is a file called Realplayer.bin. Double Click to start Realplayer. Link it to your desktop, and find the realplayer icons in /usr/share/app-install/icons (this likely also came up in your search)

If you don't find the above, then it didn't install correctly. Which leaves you with 1 of 2 options. Go to Real.com, and download again, follow the instructions, and install it again. or install Automatix, and get it from there.

http://getautomatix.com/

IGF