EXTREME Success, due purely to the members here.
 

I want to start this post by saying that I love this community of users. This is perhaps the best example that I know of the internet being a great place to "be".

I have a fully functional box now. All hardware that is supported by Linux is now working fine. The hardware that is not supported by Linux I don't use anyways. For the record, I am using Red Hat 8.0.

Let me run down just what I have on this machine and just what is working.

NVidia Riva TNT 2 videocard - I had no idea what I was doing when trying to install this, had the same newbie problem of "X is running" and did not know how to turn it off. A user on this site gave a rundown on exactly how, and now it's up with the latest NVidia drivers. When I fired up my machine after installing, I almost shit myself when the NVidia splash screen came up.

Aureal Vortex 2 Soundcard - This thing took a week of playing with before I read a user on here mention a few commands to give in the terminal before compiling. I dont remember who it was but I do intend to surf around on this site and find names. Then I'll post back here.

C.U.C.ME webcam - Had no idea if it would work. Read on here that the CPiA based cameras should work no prob, and so, it's working.

Wheel Mouse - Man, I almost tore my hair out trying to get the wheel working. One search on here, and tel seconds later my mouse is running with a wheel.

Those are just the "problem" pieces of hardware that I have worked on the most. The rest of my hardware either is absolutely unsupported (Like my C-Cube Microsystems Cinemaster 3.0 DVD decoder card) or worked right outta the box.

I'd also like to bragg about the software installed...

I've got XMAME with the GXMAME frontend installed. XMAME is built from sources, GXMAME was an RPM.

I have XAWTV running fine, coupled with my brooktree based TV capture card I watch the Simpsons on my Linux box most every night now. I also have my webcam up on it so that I can video conference and take pictures. I built this from source also, along with the extra font package (again, built from source).

XINE - Built from sources, XINE-UI built from source also. This one was a major pain in the ass; XINE's engine built fine (took forever to compile, lemme tell ya) but XINE-UI didn't want to compile at all. Again, users here showed me the way, and now it's my default MP3/MPEG/AVI/WAV and more player.

ZSNES - Built from sources, as usual. I'm finding that the greatest thing ever about Linux is sourcecode. I've learned a shitload about programming just by seriously trying Linux this past few weeks.

XMMS - Built from source, also have the MP3 plugin for Red Hat 8.0 that I only knew about because of this site.

I want to let you know the reason why I am so incredibly pleased with this site.

I went from a complete Linux know-nothing to having a fully beefed, working, and well rounded main workstation without ever posting anything here that pertains to this computer. This alone is proof that anything anyone ever wanted to know about Linux is contained on this server.

Again, I love you guys, you're the cat's meow. You'll be seeing me more and more on here.

I want to give a slight update on the progress of my box, since it is due purely to users here. I no longer go anywhere else to find answers about Linux questions.

I now have SAMBA properly configured so that a Windows XP Home edition computer can see my Linux machine on the network, login properly, and manipulate files without any modifications to the Windows XP Home machine. I've read a few times that XP Home cannot connect properly to SAMBA shares (at least not without a registry hack). This is not true.

I now have Unreal Tournament installed on my computer, the latest version. The fun part was that since my other computer has UT:Game of the Year edition on it, I got to upgrade my version of UT to a basically-UT:GOTY version quickly just by setting my Windows UT:GOTY as the server and then initiate a network game with the server on a map that does not come with my version of UT. Instant upgrade.

I've got Yahoo! Messenger up.

Thanks again to this forum!

Further news on my box (like anyone cares, but hey, I'm a proud daddy).

I succeeded! And failed.

I finally got DVD playback working on my machine. Yay, me! Had to install three packages.. libdvdcss, libdvdnav, and libdvdsomethingelse. Works fine, DVDs play now.

Then I quickly found out that while it works, it is unusable. My DVD decoder card is unsupported in Linux, and my processer is only a P3-600Mhz. My machine doesn't have enough oomph to play any DVDs smoothly.

D'OH!

Give Mplayer a shot, and compile from source. I use it on my laptop to watch DVDs.

My specs:

P2-333
192 Megs of Ram


And DVDs are now as smooth as when I used PowerDVD in windows....note tho, I don't use a DM, I log onto command line and use startx (that change alone made a huge diff), and I run blackbox and I make sure nothing extra is running while using MPlayer.

I'm also suggesting you compile it from source because you can choose the options appropriate for you AND, I find that it performs a heck of a lot better than an rpm of Mplayer (a difference of almost totally unwatchable to smooth).

So its possible..keep tinkering :D

Wow, you gotta be kidding. At nearly twice the specs of your machine (no offense), I should be able to get it working quite well then.

Time to head to mplayer's site and grab a tarball.

Ya know what the best thing about tarballs of source code are?

You can change the about screen to say that you are the person who made it. Unethical, I know, but I'm not re-releasing the source... it's just a fun thing to do. Call me quirky.

Anyways, thanks for the advice and testimony. I'll give it a shot. Hell, at the least it'll just give me another media player.