OK, so Linspire was offering free downloads of it’s product (unlike most other Linux distros, it costs money because they developers spent money to get licensing. So you pay for the licenses, not the actual OS, thus not violating the “must be free” aspect of Linux.)
So I got myself a copy and loaded it onto my laptop, a used HP Omnibook xt6050 that I got from eBay. It has a 1.13 Ghz Celeron CPU, came with 128 MB RAM (I added a 256 stick,) and a 10 gig HD (which I upgraded to a 40 gig.)
Now, it actually detected all the hardware just fine, as far as I can tell. My ethernet port works, screen works perfect (which is odd, considering when I had XP on it, the display was only half as big as the screen and needed drivers from HP to work right.)
But I have a few questions. I got myself gaim, but don’t know how to install it. The install file (which I guess is the source code?) is sitting there in my root directory, and I don’t know what to do next. I think I need a compiler…how do I get one? And what do I do once I have it?
I also have a wireless PC card I want to get to work with it. When I plug it in, nothing happens. In the settings area it recognizes the PC ports, but doesn’t notice when I plug in the card. It’s an Orinoco silver wifi card. Is there a way to get drivers for it?
Also, some good sites for general Linux help would be nice. Thanks.
Hmm…Linspire tells me that the Gaim file I have is a shell script, not a source file. Of course, I am neither more nor less confused about that. I found an option in the tools menu that runs shell scripts, but I got some kind of error when it ran the gaim one. I think I am in waaaaaay over my head here.
You certainly sound like you’re in over your head. First, downloading into the root directory isn’t the best of ideas because you have to be running as root to do so. Running as root is a bad idea unless you know why you need to, and at this point you do not. (The only things you should be doing as root are hardware configuration and software installation, and then only through some form of graphical wizard.) You should create for yourself a new user account and do stuff logged in as that user. This is how you do that.
Building applications from source is not hard if you already have the tools to do it. I don’t know if Linspire does. You should probably find prebuilt binaries for any software you want. With Gaim, it looks like a good place to start might be right here. Beyond that, I don’t know of any good repository for prebuilt Linspire software.
Finally, Linux doesn’t need to be free in the sense I think you mean. Linux the kernel is free as in freedom, because it is released under the GNU General Public License. The licensing terms don’t say anything about price. They also don’t say anything about any software you might actually run under Linux, but most Linux software is released under similar terms. This is the best page to start if you want to understand this concept.
On review, CNR isn’t what I thought it was. You can pay for it if you want, but it isn’t the only way of doing things or even necessarily the best.
I don’t know enough about Linspire to know what software it comes bundled with or how you can do various things with the default system. Hopefully someone more knowledgable will come along.
If Linspire doesn’t work out, Fedora Core 4 is a good desktop Linux system, as is Mandrake. Neither of those distros are concerned with selling you on special services like Linspire apparently is.
You’ve got to the point where most Windows users give up, wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows; Linux is now dead simple to install, but despite the existence of supposedly idiot-proof installation tools, installing applications that aren’t bundled with the distribution is invariably at best a frightening headache and at worst a complete, frustrating impossibility for people with a Windows background.
In any discussion like this though, invariably someone will come along and say that tool X or Y makes it all simple (and for a limited set of applications on a limited set of Linux distributions, they may be right), or that, when you know what you’re doing at the command line, it’s really simple (well, it would be, wouldn’t it).
But this is, I think, the single most significant factor limiting the uptake of Linux by the masses - call it what you will; stupidity, insecurity, fear or laziness on the part of the Windows user base, but until and unless something as reliably simple and universal as InstallShield exists, the story of “The OS install went really well, but I couldn’t install any apps, so I formatted and reverted to Windows” is going to be the one most people are frustratedly and repeatedly telling.
Mangetout: InstallShield isn’t really all that simple, either, unless it works 100% and doesn’t screw anything up in the process of installing the program you just got. Ask an experienced Windows user about ‘DLL Hell’ to disabuse yourself of any notions to the contrary.
In any case, I don’t want this to turn into a flamefest. I will report any post that doesn’t actually help bouv achieve his or her goal.
Times the minutes before Mangetout’s realistic and evenhanded summary of the current situation gets smacked down by somebody
I fully agree. The most infuriating thing is being told “everything you could possibly need can be installed by Synaptic/Yast/whatever”. Because (a) it isn’t, and (b) unless you know exactly what to search for, you’re stuck with a mammoth list of meaningless titles.
Just for an example of how user-friendly a current general-user distro is at present, here’s Google’s first result when I searched for ‘mandriva installing software’:
If anyone believes this is easy for the average computer user, they’re living in fantasy land.
Report away; the last thing I want to do is discourage anyone from using Linux; it’s a journey I’m struggling to attempt for myself also. Of course InstallShield isn’t infallible, but I don’t think it would be reasonable to argue that it’s anything like as difficult to install a typical Windows application as it is to install a typical Linux application in the significant majority of cases - InstallShield is mostly problem-free, Linux installation processes are mostly problematic (for Windows users).
That experienced Linux folks have such a hard time admitting this is, I’m fairly sure, part of the reason it persists as a problem.
I don’t know why you felt like raising this point, other than to be controversial, because what you are talking about has nothing at all to do with the OP’s situation. The OP is trying to install gaim, one of the most widely used pieces of open source software. If gaim isn’t bundled with his distribution, he needs to switch to another one.
I’m sorry for hijacking the thread; I was merely trying to point out that the OP is not at all alone in this predicament; I stand by my statements as accurate and as free of bias as I can possibly manage, but I will refrain from crapping on this thread any further and politely ask others that I may have encouraged to do likewise. Sorry.
Linspire is a Debian based distribution and Gaim is one of the most popular packages out there. Are you sure your can’t just use Synaptic package manger to install it? (or the command line apt-get) Are you sure your apt-sources are set up right? Failing all that you could download and install the .DEB file from debian.org.
Hmmmm, have a look around and see if you have something called “synaptic” or a “package manager”. This will help you in future situations. If you do, then just crack that baby open, hopefully Linspire should have a good respository and you can just download and install in 2 clicks.
Of course, if you don’t have a package manager, have a look around through google and find one, they’re awful handy.
Hopefully you can understand how to install gaim from the instructions already posted, but I thought Linspire had an IM client already installed?
As mentioned already, you should look into synaptic. If Linspire is Debian-based, you might also look into apt and related tools (apt-get, etc. Just to be clear, synaptic is a graphical front-end for apt, IIRC). And I can’t imagine a Linux distro that doesn’t come with a compiler – gcc and its friends (gcj, g77, etc.).
In general, after “unpacking” the source code, which you almost always download in a single (zip, bzip2, or gzip) compressed “tar” file, you simply type ./configure then make in the head directory of the source code. There should be a README and/or INSTALL file there with more detailed instructions. Admittedly, since projects are often non-commercial, it may be a lot more difficult.
One of the major problems with Linux is the lack of driver support from the manufacturerers. Fortunately, orinoco is widely supported and drivers come with the kernel. We have some at work – if I remember, I’ll check to see what the related kernel module is and post it later today.
If I might perhaps try to redeem myself from my earlier rudeness, may I suggest trying the distribution Ubuntu; I’ve not tried it personally, but it sounds like it might be a good choice here because:
-It’s free, that is to say that they’re trying as harder than some of the others to keep user costs at zero
-It comes packaged with GAIM and OpenOffice - installing these at the same time as the OS is bound to be easier than doing it afterwards.
-It includes Synaptic, which, as far as I understand, is the most intuitive and user-friendly way to install new stuff.
I’m going to download it and give it a try; the desktop you get with it is Gnome, which isn’t to everybody’s liking, but there’s a spinoff distribution called Kubuntu which has KDE as the desktop.
I’ll look into Ubuntu. I got Linspire because I saw it as being free in another forum I frequent, and some of the people there liked it, and said it was good for a firt timer, because it has a strong Windows feel. Grantned, it does look like Windows, but still operates like Linux. And it says getting programs and stuff to work is a breeze…well, yeah, if you pay $20 a year fro ther CNR service, it is. i was able to get Firefox on it very easily, though. Seeing as the getfirefox webiste detected my OS and fofered a direct link to an executable installer. Why can’t all Linuz programs do that? I’m not saying they need to detect my OS, buy why do most of them seem to be soruce code, or whatever, as oppossed to a direct installer? It worked for Firefox, so why not other programs? Is it just harder to make a program install itself? And, since Firefox has a large team of developers, it can do it easier?