New to Linux General help

Barrybear

Barrybear

Barrybear

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Joined
22 Mar 2006
Posts
662
Location
Norfolk
Just installed Unbuntu 8.10 to a separate HDD as far as i know the install is done updated and installed the Nvidia drivers it provided.

I want to be able to play movies whilst working i tried downloading divx but im told to install from root or something and im confused already and have no idea what to do.

Also as i have installed onto a separate drive i put my windows drives back in and now it boots straight into windows there must be a way to choose what drive to boot from.
 
Welcome to Linux!

Installing software in Ubuntu is very different from installing it in Windows. You don't go out to the web and download installers. Instead the system uses something called package management. You tell the machine what you want installed and it'll figure out if you already have it, find where to download it, get all the necessary prerequisite bits of software, and install it. It's pretty cool in practice.

Long story short, you don't need or want to install anything from DivX's web site. Open up a terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type
sudo apt-get update
type your password and some text will fly by as it updates its list of available software. Next type
sudo apt-get install vlc smplayer ubuntu-restricted-extras

That'll install VLC and the SmPlayer media player. If both of those can't handle whatever it is you wanted to play, the file's probably broken. :p

Ubuntu-restricted-extras is a package made up of other packages that will install the Flash plugin for Firefox, Java, MS web core fonts, media codecs, and a ton of other stuff. It's an excellent way to track down all the little bits and bobs that can't be included on the installer CD for legal reasons.
 
Regarding the HDDs

Ubuntu's installer looks around through all the disks connected to the machine and automagically sets up the GRUB bootloader to allow you to choose which one to boot when you switch your rig on. It would normally overwrite your Windows bootloader to do this, which is only a problem if you don't want to use the Linux setup anymore.

Since your Windows disk was not present, it couldn't accommodate for it. It set up the bootloader assuming it's the only OS to worry about. When the Windows drive is back the BIOS is seeing that first bootloader and is booting Windows from it.

Go into your BIOS and change the boot order, selecting the other disk, and see if that'll get it to boot Linux. If that works you can keep doing it that way. If it doesn't or you don't want the BIOS hassle whenever you want to switch, download the Super Grub Disk,boot it, and use it to re-detect OSes and make everything all hunky-dory.
 
ok thanks for the help ill just remove side panel for when i want to work in linux for now as i dont really want to get into using it as a main OS as i mainly use my pc for games.
 
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