I've recently ported over to Linux after being an MS user for a very long time. I last gave Linux a punt when the redhat distro was up to version 7 - but had a mad fit with trying to get to grips with it after a few days and when back to MS.

This time, I'm determined to give it the best shot that I can, but admit the frustrations are really starting to get me down... and I am turning to you guys for help!

Okay, I'm running the rather nifty looking Fedora Core - 1 from Redhat. Much more swish than my last foray into the Linux world, although I'm having several frustrations...

1 - I am having problems getting my head around installing software. I try and use RPMs where I can and go through the process, but once it's done there's usually no damn icons to be found to run my application. I'm not the type to go running through newbie-unfriendly directories looking for an executable to run. What's the deal with that?

2 - I'm still most certainly a gamer at heart and heard good things about gaming under Linux nowadays, but at the moment I've become fairly frustrated with it all. I've downloaded and installed the Nvidia drivers - and they are running nice on my machine now (Tuxracer is running smooth) - although I'm having all sorts of problems snagging some of the freeware games online to download and play. They all require all sorts of dependancies - one biggie being Open GL (for example fooBilliard) - but I have no idea where to get an RPM (if one exists) for it. So far I've only been able to to download and successfully install 'barrage' and 'nethack' and nice as they are, when you're coming from the land of MS, they're not going to hold sway for long. I'm having problems with GLtron, Csmash, Frozen Bubble, Pingus and Foobilliard. Doesn't Core 1 on it's massive 3 CD install set come with the files required to make these games run?

3 - better yet - is there a complete idiots' guide to quality gaming on Linux about? I tried the Linux Game Tome and got lost... a step by step guide would be not only useful, but also give me confidence.

4 - Tried to get Xmame installed. I have a host of ROMs sitting on my Win2k share that I played all the time under Mame 32 for windows - I'd honestly love to get these running under Linux instead, but get the following when I try and install the RPM :

root@localhost Application Installers]# rpm -iv xmame-0.76.1-1.fr.i386.rpm
warning: xmame-0.76.1-1.fr.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e42d547b
error: Failed dependencies:
xmame-bin = 0.76.1 is needed by xmame-0.76.1-1.fr

Got frustrating? It's happening on a lot of the stuff I try and 'install' to run - and when it's successful, I can't find a bloody icon to run anything. ARRRRRRGH!

5 - Diablo 2. I own the orginal CDs and want to install to play - I have LOD and the latest patch. Naturally it works perfect under windows, but I'm having nightmares getting it to run under WINE. Anyone got a link to walk a newbie through getting his fave dungeon hacking game installed?

Sorry for the rambling post guys - it's a little frustrating at the moment. I'm a tech by trade under MS systems and not used to asking for help when dealing with computers. Linux however is making me feel like an idiot...

If any kind souls would care to spare some time for some hand holding, it would be muchly appreciated.

Cheers.

Hello DMWargamerAU,
you certainly have many questions for one post. However I think I can be of help for some of them.
I am not much of a gamer myself, so forgive me, if I will not be able to solve all your game related problems.

So, lets get started:

1 - I am having problems getting my head around installing software. I try and use RPMs where I can and go through the process, but once it's done there's usually no damn icons to be found to run my application. I'm not the type to go running through newbie-unfriendly directories looking for an executable to run. What's the deal with that?
Linux has often been critisized for how hard it is to install software. I have been annoyed many times myself. There are projects under way to solve this once and for all, see for example autopackage.org.
For now, this will not help you, so lets deal with already completed solutions:
As you know, rpms are, what is used to install software in most linux distribution (especially in redhat (including Fedora), who invented to format). To avoid rpm-hell (the many dependencies you mention in 2 and 4) there have been many tools developed. The most important ones for RPM-based distros are apt-get and yum, both of which are command-line tools. You can find more about them by looking at the man- or info-pages (man apt-get or info apt-get (replace apt-get with yum, if you want to know about that)).
While these tools are fine, they will not help you, if you dont know exactly, what you want. Also (maybe even more importantly) they are command-line tools and not very newbie friendly. Fortunatelly there is Synaptic, a nive GUI frontend (basically a windows-like program). You might want to give it a try. You can get it from the fine rpm-site Freshrpms here (link to download page). It features a nice search interface for all your applications needs . The most important feature is automatic dependency resolution.
(On a side-note, be careful not to use any of these methods to upgrade important parts of the system. I have had very nasty problems after one such upgrade failed.)

Fortunatelly, many of the other problems (numbers 2 and 4 (partially)) you mention will be solved, if this works for you.

3 - better yet - is there a complete idiots' guide to quality gaming on Linux about? I tried the Linux Game Tome and got lost... a step by step guide would be not only useful, but also give me confidence.
As I said, I am not much of a gamer, but you might want to try linuxgames.com, especially their articles section.

5 - Diablo 2. I own the orginal CDs and want to install to play - I have LOD and the latest patch. Naturally it works perfect under windows, but I'm having nightmares getting it to run under WINE. Anyone got a link to walk a newbie through getting his fave dungeon hacking game installed?
From your post I conclude that you know that it can be done . In fact, according to Transmeta (maker of WineX) Diablo 2 works fine under linux. You might want to buy or download (requires you to build it from source and lacks some (few) features) WineX here. For information how to get Diablo 2 to run, take a look at their forum.

Well, I dont know if any of this will be useful for you. I am confident however that you will feel quite at home in linux once it is set up and running smoothly.
Welcome to the world of linux. I hope you will love it here as much as I do.

Feel free to ask more questions,
- drowstar

DMW,
We feel your frustration as we have all been there ourselves. Linux is so much NOT like the Windows environment and has a very steep and long learning curve. But, that's what draws us to it; the challenge. (Something I'm sure you can appreciate as well, being a Techie!)
That being said, you should just take each of your problems one at a time and work through them. I can guarantee that there is a solution to your issues, but don't expect to find them overnight or one answer for everything.
Something I may suggest is to use a distro such as Mandrake, which sets almost everything up for you out-of-the-box, until you get fairly high on the learning curve, then switch to your favourite distro. We're here to help as well, but we may not always be available or wish to see you work through things on your own as it's the best way to learn this OS.
Some hints:
1. You should download the very latest Linux drivers for your video card in order to get OpenGL to work, and some card manufacturers don't even have Linux drivers available. If you post your card specs, one of us may know a site that has drivers made for it.
2. If you're running a wireless network, Linux is fairly new to this arena so drivers for your NIC may not be available either. But, never fear, the open source community is always on the job! (i.e.
linuxant (they offer downloadable wireless drivers for a small fee, but have a 30 day free trial to make sure everything works)
3. As for gaming, you may want to look around as some games include Linux versions (i.e. Unreal 2003 and 2004) and some have linux ports that enable them to run natively (i.e. Quake 3 Arena).

I'm running Mandrake 10.0 Community and have Quake 3, Unreal 2004, a wireless networked with my wife's WinXP box into a router, and USB hub for graphics (VideoBlaster). Everything runs just beautifully (actually, I kinda think the OpenGL games perform better than when I ran them in Windows!)

Keep on it!
J

Thanks heaps for the very prompt reply drowstar - muchly appreciated.

Without a doubt I'll be asking further questions as time passes, but for the moment I'll have a play with Synaptic and see how I go. Something that will be able to tell me up front which dependancies I'm missing will be a help for sure.

Cheers.

heh heh heh

Chuckles...

[root@localhost Application Installers]# rpm -iv synaptic-0.47-1.1.fr.i386.rpm
warning: synaptic-0.47-1.1.fr.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e42d547b
error: Failed dependencies:
apt >= 0.5.4 is needed by synaptic-0.47-1.1.fr
libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5.so.0 is needed by synaptic-0.47-1.1.fr
librpm-4.3.so is needed by synaptic-0.47-1.1.fr
librpmdb-4.3.so is needed by synaptic-0.47-1.1.fr
librpmio-4.3.so is needed by synaptic-0.47-1.1.fr
[root@localhost Application Installers]#

*sigh*

Any ideas?

1. You should download the very latest Linux drivers for your video card in order to get OpenGL to work, and some card manufacturers don't even have Linux drivers available. If you post your card specs, one of us may know a site that has drivers made for it.

It's an Asus Ti4200 card - V9280/TD

The Nvidia drivers that I downloaded and installed actually seem to do the job well - at least games like Tuxracer and Chromium work fine! GLTron is weird though - It seems to have installed (I have an icon on the menu for it now under 'Other') and when I click it the system looks like it's loading the game and then.. nothing The mouse cursor goes back to normal and the taskbar icon is gone. Go figure

Tell you one thing that's bugging the hell out of me at the moment though - I seem to be getting a slight sound 'lag' in my games. ie in Tuxracer, it takes about half a second before you hear the 'ding' sound where tux nabs a fish... is that normal or a known issue? I have a creative SBLive! in my system...

I'm also enjoying the challenge of learning a new system as well, but it can be hard to fumble your way through by yourself - the last time I had to do that I gave up and went back to Windows - and I REALLY want to avoid that this time if I can...

The main three games I played under MS systems were my MAME Roms, Diablo II and America's Army - and all three are supposed to work under Linux well (with AA even having a native port) - but MAME and Diablo II are currently alluding me.

Mind you, I'd be more than happy just to get some of the games from the Linux Game Tome site working and working well first, before tackling the bigger ones.

The only other area I'm trying to stumble through at the moment is getting a decent MP3 player on my system and find out how to bring across my mp3 collection from an NTFS volume on the same PC... I just found XMMS... OOoooooh! Isn't discovery a wonderful thing?

Seriously though gents, if people could give me advice on the gaming side of things and the RPM management side of things, that would be a great help.

Cheers and thanks again everyone...

DMWargamerAu,
I am sorry, I should have thought of that possibility.
However, it is not as much a problem as it may seem.
This time you will need to install apt by hand, but this should not be a problem at all.

From a look at your error messages, it seems, all you are missing is apt and maybe the librpm or rpm-devel packages.
Installing an apt-rpm from here should do the trick.

Hope this helps you. I have to go now, but I will check the thread in a few hours when I get back. Good luck to you,
- drowstar

Hmmm....

[root@localhost Application Installers]# rpm -iv apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.2.2.fr.i386.rpm
warning: apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.2.2.fr.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e42d547b
error: Failed dependencies:
librpm-4.3.so is needed by apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.2.2.fr
librpmdb-4.3.so is needed by apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.2.2.fr
librpmio-4.3.so is needed by apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.2.2.fr
libselinux.so.1 is needed by apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.2.2.fr


I think you're right with the librpm stuff too...

Where can I go to just look up for dependancy rpms like this? I can see for myself what I need, I just don't know where I can go to look for them. Freshrpm's didn't seem to have this RPM on the site when I looked?

http://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2htm...mit=Search+...

DMWargamerAU,
I would have liked for you to have an easier start with linux. As long as problems like this are not dealt with, linux will not be a pleasure to use, especially for new users.

A good place to go, when you look for rpms is (in my experience, I use apt-get whenever possible now) rpmseek.com.
For the issue at hand, I believe Genesee has pointed you to the right place. (Thanx for that link, Genesee.)

Good luck,
- drowstar

Fedora Core 1 should come with yum already installed. You might be able at the command line to just do:
then
This should install it while fixing the dependencies issues that wouldn't allow you to install the RPM form.

yeah...what 69_rm_rs said...open a terminal, type yum update, and it should sync all your installed packages with whats available...and when it's done, type yum install synaptic and it should install synaptic and any dependencies it might need...