Linux Gurus - i need your help

[Buddy_Christ]

i know some of you are running linux and actually know the system pretty good. i don't know a whole hell of a lot about linux, i can navigate my way around thanks to the GUIs and can get the basics to work. i switched to linux last June because it was either that or continue to run Win98SE, and i was compeltely sick of it and wasn't about to buy winXP (which i've tried and am not overly fond of).

anywho, i started with Mandrake 9.1 and upgraded to 9.2 back in December. i'm running Mozilla 1.4 (it also says Mozilla/5.0) as my primary browser. Konqueror browser actually looks better when surfing EF (all the neat options at the bottom - rate thread and what not, don't come up in Mozilla). i've downloaded all sorts of plug-ins for Mozilla, and it says they're installed, including Java and Flash, but those 2 (as well as any .wmv stuff) does not work in any of my browsers. things like mp3 and some video has worked in my browsers before, and those plugins are installed. so i'm really baffled, and since i'm not a programmer, i dunno what to do.

please help me. i wanna be able to surf the net and see these things again without having to boot into windows (it's still on the computer, and mega screwed up, i feel no need to even bother with it though). i also wanna access some of the plat features, like hushmail and chat, but can't without java working. thanks for any help anyone can give.

 

[BrandonXJ]

before we get too deep into this, try 2 more.. get opera, and if there's no luck there, try firefox. you'll need to re-install flash/shockwave as plug-ins to both.

http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=linux (get the rpm, it'll be easier.)

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.8/firefox-0.8-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz

you may have install the sun JRE again if you have java issues.

 

[Buddy_Christ]

i've had problems with rpms before. i'll try again though.

 

[BrandonXJ]

just download the rpm that's for mandrake 9, and then drop to a command prompt with root/admin access, and type rpm -i -v /path/to/rpm/file.rpm

 

[Dial_tone]

Linux can be pretty hard to manage unless you really master the rpm switches. I don't like the fact that it doesn't handle the dependancies for you. You really want to research then install "apt-get" then Synaptic. apt-get is a command line rpm installer that also installs all the stuff each rpm depends on; Synaptic is a GUI for apt-get to make it easy to use. I gave up on rpms altogether and switched to Gentoo, which is near impossible to install w/o a Ph D.
As far as the plug-ins go just read http://plugindoc.mozdev.org ; it should tell you everything. I have plugins for java, realaudio, quicktime, shockwave/flash, acrobat and mplayer for video formats.

steve@gentoo:~> ls /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
flashplayer.xpt libflashplayer.so libvlcplugin.so nppdf.so
javaplugin_oji.so libnullplugin.so mplayerplug-in.so rpnp.so


All the *.so files are plugins and they need to be in the plugin dir to work.

 

[Buddy_Christ]

DT - i went to that site, and to find the java plug in from there...damn man, it takes you to a bunch of mirror sites and sub directory after sub directory....i can't find any of those files! any help?

Brandonxj - i saved both of those to one of my hard drives. where do they have to be installed to exactly so they work? i hate to say this, but i kinda need a step by step or i'm just gonna blow it out my ass......

 

[Buddy_Christ]

bump?

 

[Buddy_Christ]

hey, i double clicked on the opera rpm and it installed itself into /usr/share/opera. how in the hell do i use it now?! lol sorry, i'm like completely clueless. at least it installed it into the right place though.

 

[Buddy_Christ]

nevermind, this thing automatically plugged itself into my menu! trying it now.

 

[Buddy_Christ]

ok, java on Opera don't work as of yet. gonna tinker, but not sure what to do.

how do i install firefox?

 

[Buddy_Christ]

bump.

my system is running slower since the opera install, and i'm not even using it. it's not running in the background either.

 

[BrandonXJ]

you should be able to uninstall opera through your package management utils, look under your start menu for system, packeges or software, etc..

as far as firefox, you may need to compile it, I'm not sure..

drop to a shell and navigate to the directory you stored firefox in, then type

tar -zxvf firefox-whatever.whatever.tar.gz

then to comile you'd do
"./configure" [enter]
"make" [enter]
"make install" [enter]

don't use the quotes obviously.

 

[Buddy_Christ]

i figured out the problem with the bogging, it wasn't the Opera install. i had two power outages on saturday. the first one, i was at the computer upon restart and there to hit 'Y' to force file integrity check, the second time i wasn't. did an unclean restart last night, forced the integrity check, and everything is kosher.

the thing with opera, i went into the preferences, and there's actually no java in my /lib/whereever there's no java for it to run off of. so can i give it some java?

i'll try the firefox thing right now.

 

[BrandonXJ]

here's a link for info on Java for opera.. give that a whirl.

http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml?index=459

 

[Buddy_Christ]

the firefox thing isn't working. for some reason i can't copy out of this terminal (xterm).

it's saying a lot of "cannot change owndership to uid 1041, gid 1041; operation not permitted"

try to do a ./configure afterwards and it says -bash: ./configure: No such file or directory.

any clues?

 

[BrandonXJ]

are you doing all of this as root? you need administrative privileges to do this.

also, did you go into the directory that it extracted everything to?

if ./configure doesn't work, try juse "configure"

 

[Buddy_Christ]

i've tried firefox by extracting it and by not extrracting it. still a no go. telilng me it can't change ownership, etc.

in xterm, i'm diong su - "passowrd" and that's it. that gives me root privelidges. do i need to be root root? ./configure is the command, configure doesn't work.

with Opera, it's telling me there is no java installed. it's version 7.5. the page you linked me to has nothing about this version.

am i hopeless?

 

[Buddy_Christ]

www.opera.com/linux/docs/plugins/install/#general

installed the JRE2 with the commands from there. everything went smooth. no problems.

JAVA STILL DONT WORK!

 

[BrandonXJ]

try this for firefox.

http://jetblackz.nabaza.org/InstallingMozillaFirefox.html

 

[Buddy_Christ]

bro, big bonus in opera..........i somehow managed to get the java working. it's not FULLY working, but it's working. i was able to log into my school's system for classes, grades, what not, that's a java script.

i can't load plat chat, it tells me "applet loaded" and that's it. so i'm partially working in opera. i guess when i installed version 1.4.02....whatever, that did the trick. the 1.3 version wasn't good enough.

will try the firefox thing. not too comfy with opera as of yet. plus not all the features of a site like EF show up (thread tools and what not at the bottom of teh page).

 

[Buddy_Christ]

firfox installed, and it downloads it's own plugins...that's kinda sweet actually. we'll see what happens in a minute when it's done, i'm letting it download the right plugin to access my schools server.

 

[BrandonXJ]

sweet.. hope that works for you. firefox is this shizznit!

 

[Buddy_Christ]

working on java plugins for firefox right now. the autoinstall kinda gave me a problem. downloading another plugin as we speak.

i hope this clears it all up.

 

[Buddy_Christ]

nope, no such luck with firefox java install autoinstall or manual install. their instructions suck.