hi, i just installed mandrake 10 comm. i an a very experienced windows user but tired of the insability. any way i am very noob at linux and cant figure out how to install progs. i downloaded mplayer and cant find an exe. to install, i have been reading and found people talking about rpm files? i cant seem to find it, i did extract to home/kelly/documents/mplayer and have a whole host of files, where do i go from here???

First of all, exe files are Windows binaries, and don't exist in the Linux world. Secondly, RPMs are packages that install things for you, somewhat like a Windows setup program. More than likely what you have is the source, which means that you'll need to compile it. That means it's time to open a terminal, and become the root user at a certain point.

*Open a terminal*
cd /home/kelly/documents/mplayer
./configure (or ./Configure Case is important in Linux)
make
su (enter root password to become the root user)
make install

I think that should cover the basics of compiling from the source. To put it quite simply, Linux is a whole new animal compared to Windows, and it sometimes helps to have less experience with Windows when moving into learning Linux. This way you don't get the ideas and things of Windows planted into your head, which happened to me when I made my first and failed attempt to become a Linux user.

If everyone started out with Linux, then Windows would be confusing, but it's the other way around sadly.

There are no "exe"s in Linux .

What's the file extension on file you downloaded? Is it something like "rpm" or "tar.gz"? If it's rpm, then it can be a problem if that rpm was created for Red Hat/Fedora as opposed to Mandrake...

well im in the term window and in the directory but it says no file when i type configure, i checked in the folder and it shows a configure shell script
why is it saying no file found or bad directory??

Mplayer is a great program.

Type ./configure, not just "configure" . The single dot stands for your current directory when it is not in your path.

or type:

./configure --enable-gui

if you want to use mplayer's GUI, but you will need gtk development files installed. There is more information in the README file.

That be why me put the ./ in there. Darn M$ and their brainwashin'. Worry not me lass/lad, we'll get her workin' even if we ave ta take down Billy in the process. Argh.

ok i missed one folder in the tree, i found it and it started but now i need to find a compatible compiler supported by mplayer, i will work on getting that and resume, thanx for the help on getting going on linux and i will probably be back before to long hehe

Make sure you have make and gcc installed. You'll also want to download the various codecs on the mplayerhq.hu site for maximum playability. And skins to make it look good.

Which will both be on your mandrake cds, somewhere under development.

ok i have it installed with the gui, it starts but it tells ne it cant open dvd device: dev/dvd/
anyone know why?

i had the same problem. Solved by making a link from /dev/cdrom to /dev/dvd.

looks like my system named my dvd player /dev/cdrom

maybe this could solve your problem too ?
let us know !

could you give a rundown on how to link that

i think it was something like

ln /dev/dvd /dev/cdrom

I can't remember the exact syntax, and I'm not behind my linux-box right now

ok it looks like i got the disk recognized, but now i get error opening vidio output device,
any ideas, ive been trying different codecs in mplayer but no good?

The video out is the display it's putting it to. Try putting in -vo x11 or -vo xv in the command line.