I just installed the Mandrake 9.0 version of Linux yesterday. 
It seems much cooler than windows. Anyone know where I can get a hold of a copy of Blender for Linux and some good tutorials on Linux, especially installing programs?
Goo
To install alot of programs you have to compile them yourself.
Hehe, good luck learning.
One big difference is the constant mounting and unmounting drives.
compiling programs from source requires the usuall routineā¦
tar -xvzf program_name.tar.gz
cd program_name
./configure (before that try ./configure --help, for a list of all possible options that you may have when configuringā¦)
su (you have to become root for the next stepsā¦)
make
make test (optionally)
make install
make clean (optionally)
some of the steps can be ommitedā¦ Within every source archive, the developers always contain some documents which explain a little bit the procedureā¦ Check for files like āREADMEā, or āINSTALLāā¦ etc. and read them carefully, before you do anything!!! Make sure that you understood them wellā¦
The most common reasons why a program should ārefuseā to compile and install, is that you either are missing some essential libraries, or (edit) your libraries need update, or those essential libraries are in an other directory than the program is searching them forā¦ Check the top level Makefile in such caseā¦ I have resolved a lot of problems in the past by changing some āvariablesā in the Makefileā¦ Pay attention for error messages during compilationā¦ They are there to give you a picture of what went wrong and give you the chance to fix itā¦
If theres an rpm version of the program, prefer it!!! It will save you from unnessecary frustrationsā¦
The procedure to install a program from itās rpm, is:
rpm -ivh program_name.rpm
(edit)Most probable reason for rpm to fail to install, is when you have missing dependencies issueā¦ Try to install the package, with:
rpm -ivh --force program_name.rpm or rpm -ivh --nodeps program_name.rpm, allthough the most safe solution is to find which labraries provide the shared libraries that you are missing and install/upgrade themā¦
For a full explanation of all available options try:
man make
man rpm
it will give you the manual pages fro the aboveā¦
I hope I havenāt accidentally missed somethingā¦
Good luck with Linuxā¦
Spyros.
Not with Mandrake, it uses supermount, excellent!
Welcome to Linux, Goo. Installing programms is most time reading the README that comes with them 
Donāt become root with āsuā until make install. If you have different *PATH variables set up for root and the other users, then make might fail (since configure checks only for the user currently running it).
So my advice would be:
make
make test (optionally)
su (you have to become root for the next stepā¦might want to try āsu -c āmake installāā instead)
make install
make clean (optionally)
[quote=āSchlopsā]
Not with Mandrake, it uses supermount, excellent!
)[/quote]
what is supermount?
it can automaticly mount floppies? I have to install that to my wifes machine if it really works
.b
ok i am looking to get linux (mandrake 09.2 unless they go bankrupt)
what is rpm
what is a static program
and what does mounting and unmounting drive mean
in four years i will hopfully know enough to make a renderfarm out of old computers (my goal). do you think that would be an impossible dream in four years.
thanks (i am trying to learn enough before installing it then breaking it)
Would rather take you 6 months. It canāt be all that hard.
@alltaken
rpm = redhat package manager: a way of packaging binary (and source) installs so that they know where and how to install themselves on your system and what their dependencies are. They are often made for specific distros/architectures, but many will work on same. Once installed the package is known to the database on your machine, so it can be uninstalled, queried, etc.
static program = I assume you refer to static linking for a program- instead of loading needed libraries at runtime (dynamic linking, similar to loading dll files in windows) this can releive library dependancies while increasing program size (and potentially losing features, e.g. hardware acceleration, since the static openGL libs are software rendered).
mounting and unmounting In order to āseeā the contents of a drive, it has to be mounted into your filesystem. windows does this automatically- put a floppy in, it detects that and mounts it. linux might require you to mount it manually (command line mount argument is mount, followed by some options, eg the device and which folder to mount it to, or by clicking an icon in gnome or kde) but you might have some automatic mount daemons running that do that for you (similar to windows)
It works really very good. Mandrake installs this automatically, sets the options in /etc/fstab for every removable media (CD, DVD, floppy) and puts an icon on the KDE-desktop. No mount/unmount-commands needed again, just eject the CD or floppy.
From the supermount manpage:
supermount allows system administrator to enable or disable the supermount feature offered in recent mandrake kernels. This feature automatically manages mounting and unmounting removable medias when needed.
Iām pretty sure that this also works with other Linux distros, maybe you need to patch the kernel. Google and freshmeat might be your friends if you donāt have Mandrake.
(These Linux-threads allways turn into monsters :< 
)
Another questionā¦ Iām having trouble access my CD drive. Linux knows itās there, but it says Iām not allowed to acces it. Whatās going on? Could this have something to do with mounting/unmounting?
Goo
I do not run Redhat but instead run Debian so the commands might be a bit different, however, I might be able to point you in a helpful direction.
It is possible you have a permissions problem. Look in your fstab file, which in Debian is /etc/fstab (it should be in the tree from /etc, run the command ālocate fstabā, without the quotation markls, on the prompt in a terminal window and it should tell you where the file is on your system) and your permissions re: CD ROM should be a line something like:
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noauto 0 0
You will note the word "user " which means any user can use the /dev/cdrom without extra priviledges such as being ārootā (a unix demi-godlike being )
If this does not work, post the exact error message (copy and paste) and perhaps something else can be tried.
I did a search for fstab and it doesnāt seem to exist, or at least not in the etc directory. The error message I get when I try to open a cd is āUnable to enter file:/mnt/cdrom. You do not hhave access rights to this location.ā I went in and looked in the mnt directory and cdrom is a locked directory. I canāt even access it as root, although I can look at the properties and it says their that anyone can read and write the directory. I didnāt see any way to unlock the directory though.
Goo
It impossible that fstab is not present at your system!!!
If that was the case you wouldnāt be able, not only to mount the cdrom, but to even boot your computer, at the first place!!!
And I doubt that fstab is in an other location than under /etc/ā¦ Most of the important configuration files, in every distribution reside in /etcā¦ And I think this is the place where your distro has itā¦
Try the command:
less /etc/fstab, and see if the less program opens the fileā¦
From the error message that you report, I see that fstab, exists allrightā¦ You only have, a āpermissionsā issue thereā¦ allthough itās rather strange that root canāt read the cdrom!!!
KDE, has a utility to manage users and groups permissionsā¦ Itās called ākuserā or somethingā¦ Youāll find it somewhere at KDEās āstart menuā, perhaps under āconfigurationā or somethingā¦ Use it to see what kind of groups your user belongs inā¦ Report here what youāll findā¦
Spyros.
Well, I havenāt experienced any problems due to this so far, but heyā¦ I think youāre right!!! At least itās the most safer thing to do!!!
Thanks for correcting me Eric!!!
Spyros.
I found the fstab file. Iād been looking for a directory. Thatās why I didnāt see it. Hereās what it says about the cdrom: ānone /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,r,ā,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0ā
I noticed that the floppy, which I can access, didnāt say user. It also didnāt say ro and said sync. Could changing some of that fix the problem?
My user didnāt belong to any groups other than root, so I added him to cdrom, but that didnāt do anything so I changed it back to what it was before. I logged in as root, but I still couldnāt access the cdrom.
Goo
Goo,
Since your CDROM access problem is a permissions problem, there is really only one thing to fix. (I think ) There should be one line per device on your system, ie: one line for CDROM, one line for the floppy etc.
BTW ro stands for āRead Onlyā.
Try posting 3 or 4 lines from the /etc/fstab file so we can compare what is working with what is not working. Also post some of the groups file to see if we can see if the problem has anything to do with what groups āuserā belongs to or not.
Hereās what the fstab file says:
/dev/hdb5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdb8 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,ā,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,ā,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/win_c2 vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb7 swap swap defaults 0 0
I copied this by hand so there could be a few letters missing
What do you mean by a group file? A listing of the different groups?
Goo
Goo,
Looking at the lines for the floppy and the CDROM sort of says that part should be right. The entries that effect who gets to use each device compare so if one is right the other should be.
You did say you can access the floppy, how are you accessing it? What command makes it run? For example are you accessing it through linux?
I just mounted my CDROM with the command āmount /dev/cdromā. In my /etc/fstab file the entry /dev/cdrom is the mount point. Look under the column <mount point> (in the file /etc/fstab) in your system and try the appropriate arrangement.
possibly āmount /mnt/cdromā or āmount supermountā and let us know the result. BTW when you use a suggested cmd (command) ignore the quotation marks ā ā as they are there only to delineate the cmd.
ro = read only, which is true for a cdrom, but not for a floppy. so I suppose that is right.
I donāt have supermount, so I canāt help you there, but I assume that means you donāt have to mount the cdrom drive to access it.
it looks like the mount point is /mnt/cdrom
it also seems you have a scsi cdrom drive - is this true? it might be that it is a cdr and linux is using scsi emulation for it, but Iām not to sure how that works.
do you have in your /dev directory the file cdrom?
if you do you could try (as root)
put in a data cdrom in the drive
mount /dev/cdrom /folder you wish to mount it to
you might have to specify file system with -t followed by the type (could be iso9660), say you wanted to mount it to /root/cdrom (an example)
mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /root/cdrom
cd /root/cdrom
ls
if that doesnāt work try substituting /dev/cdrom with /dev/scd0 as in the fstab, and repeat
when you are done, cd out of the directory, and type
umount /root/cdrom
try this and report any and all error messages here - in fact try it with /dev/scd0 before you try /dev/cdrom since that is what is in your fstab.