[spearfish]

Hey guys,
Recently I got fed up with Windows. 1/3 of the time it was left on screen saver for an excess of 2 hours it would freeze. And it just generally sucked.

So after trying a few distros, Debian Linux looked the best (and was the first one to install correctly ). This thing is wired the the Debian Project.

The only problem is my YIM / AIM / ICQ client is only for Windows. So is a lot of other software. Download.com doesn't have a section for Linux software.

So, being a Linux newbie, I decided to ask you all; where can I find some software? I have a lot built in (in fact I think the chat client is all I'm missing!).

Do I just Google it? Is there a linuxdownloads.com?

Any help would be great, Thanks

[realNoName]

Debian Packages (software)


for your im client use pidgen (gaim)


you might want to look up apt-get command... it installs packages for you

This post has been edited by realNoName: 10 May 2008 - 11:47 AM

[spearfish]

It looks like Pidgen is only for Fedora. Am I wrong in thinking this?

[.Maleficus.]

spearfish, on 10 May, 2008 - 12:05 PM, said:

It looks like Pidgen is only for Fedora. Am I wrong in thinking this?

Yep . You can find Pidgin for any distro (it comes pre-installed on most). Instead of looking for it on the internet, just do this.

Open up a terminal and type sudo apt-get install pidgin. Enter you password, and BAM!, Pidgin will install.


Edit: I see how you thought Pidgin was Fedora only. On their site, if you wanted to download it from them, you would need to download the source code. You then extract the archive to your disk, cd to the directory and run the installer. Here's an example. Say you download and extract the folder to your Desktop directory. Open a terminal, and the entire process would look like this.

cd Desktop/pidgin-folder-name
./configure
make
sudo make install

This post has been edited by .Maleficus.: 10 May 2008 - 03:02 PM

[MorphiusFaydal]

If you're using Debian "Lenny" (also know as "testing", but which is very stable), you can do sudo apt-get install pidgin, because Pidgin is in the "Lenny" software repos.

[spearfish]

No, I'm using the latest stable release.

[no2pencil]

One of the best things about Linux is that if you can't APT get a distribution, you can download the tar-ball & compile it from source.

I've put Pidgen on my Slackware system, so I know that this is possible

[spearfish]

Maleficus; that didn't work I even tried logging on as root even though I'm an admin.

Any other ideas?

[no2pencil]

spearfish, on 11 May, 2008 - 01:48 AM, said:

Any other ideas?

...

Did you try downloading & installing from source?

[spearfish]

Yes. I downloaded the archive file; extracted it to desktop, and followed the commands suggested.

cd Desktop/pidgin-folder-name
./configure
make
sudo make install

[no2pencil]

spearfish, on 11 May, 2008 - 01:56 AM, said:

Yes. I downloaded the archive file; extracted it to desktop, and followed the commands suggested.

cd Desktop/pidgin-folder-name
./configure
make
sudo make install

.... & ?

Did that work? Circle yes or no!

[spearfish]

Quote

that didn't work

No

~Just on another topic, is there a way to run windows programs? Like Starcraft?

~Also, how do I scan for spyware / viruses???

[Nykc]

I got pidgin running smoothly on Ubuntu.

Wine?

[Steven Smith]

As somewhat of a newcomer to Linux... I'll throw in my 2 cents as well....

As for viruses...

if OS==Linux {
viruses=!a_problem
}

How to emulate windows (DirectX based games typically) ... you are looking for "Wine." It isn't perfect but it works for many games.

As for packages/software. Different Linux distro's handle things differently. Coming from Windows, I found software installation to be about 5x more work on Linux... until I learned what I was doing. Now it is at worst comparable and sometimes twice as fast. There will often be problems on install for some things. Introduce yourself to the respective distro's forum and start reading. For every problem you solve you learn something new. Also learn how to use whatever package manager your distro pushes. It will typically do some legwork like resolving dependencies (IE. This movie player requires gstreamer to be installed, etc.) and even download and install the software for you.

To plug my particular distro, I like ArchLinux. It only installs a core from the start and anything such as a desktop environment (KDE, Gnome, etc.) you install yourself. IT comes with a great package manager called Pacman. To install KDE I would just type "pacman -Sy kde" and it will update repositories, fetch the software, resolve dependencies, and install. Also, there is a up to date wiki that walks you through many problems.

Hope you enjoy your Linux experience. Stick with it, it's worth it.

[spearfish]

Thanks guys, Wine looks neat.

Just for a test; I was able to install Trillian using Wine. I can even load it up. But as soon as it loads; it becomes unresponsive. Is there some setting I need to configure in Wine to make it work right?

Update:
Turns out all I need to do to install Gaim (Pidgin) is type in:
apt-get install gaim
in the terminal.

Update 2:
After a system update; which involved the Wine package; Trillian was also able to function normally. I prefer Gaim though! What can be done is truly, truly amazing. The many benefits of Linux (such as the sexy look!) aren't halted at all by the lack of software! Pwned!

This post has been edited by spearfish: 11 May 2008 - 02:56 PM