[MorphiusFaydal]

spearfish, on 11 May, 2008 - 11:58 AM, said:

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!

GAIM is what Pidgin used to be called. GAIM is no longer updated. The reason I only gave instructions for "Lenny" is that I, like an idiot, had a friend who used Linux and would have told you that Debian Testing is usually Debian "more stable than another distro's stable release, but we're too conservative to actually call it stable, so we're going to call it Testing."

And, just to satisfy my own geekish curiosity, what step did your attempt at a manual compile fail on? Can you post any errors you got?

[.Maleficus.]

My guess is that the manual compiled failed from either a) not have gcc installed or b ) not having the dependencies installed.


Edit: For some reason the past 2 days when I tried to post it this topic I got 403: Forbidden?

This post has been edited by .Maleficus.: 13 May 2008 - 03:21 AM

[spearfish]

Sorry, I really don't know what errors I got. I'm a novice at this whole thing and was basically punching in code that I found from random sites which looked right.

And maleficus, it's a sign from the gods o.O

[no2pencil]

spearfish, on 13 May, 2008 - 03:35 PM, said:

Sorry, I really don't know what errors I got. I'm a novice at this whole thing and was basically punching in code that I found from random sites which looked right.

Novice or not. If you want to be successful with Linux, you are going to have to pay attention to when something fails. If it says ERROR, & you truly want it to work... write it down! Take notes, do some reading. If you point & click your way through Linux, chances are you'll be worse off than with Windows. This is just general advice, let alone if you are asking for help on a specific situation. You can't expect others to know how your system failed. Take the guess work out of it

[Delta_Echo]

Linux distros use software Repositories.
That means you can issue a command to your package manager to
download and install software from these repos as you see fit. Depending on
arguments you parse to the package manager. For example, if you were using
Fedora 8:

yum install pidgin 

would look through the Repos (Which are nothing but webpages with download links in a special order)
and find the packages (parts of software) that you requested. Then it will check the Dependencies for
that software, that is other software that the software that you specified needs to work. For example,
is you installed KDE (a desktop environment) you would need a package called x. (X-Windows)
So, your computer (linux) would loom through the repos and find the most up-to-date version of X.
Then, download it, with everything else that is needed. Sometimes a dependency even has a dependency.
At one time (and sometimes still) many linux distros would need you to MANUALLY sort through all the dependencies.
THANK GOD that most distros will take care of that automatically.
Once its all downloaded the software is installed according to install rules that are downloaded with it.

There are a few ways to search repos, because Fedora uses YUM i can use Yumex to search the repos.
I can also use the "Packet Manager" to enter key words, and it will suggest packages. I have only used Fedora
so i am not sure if you have a similar tool but i think its standard for Gnome and KDE. Look under Applications>Add/Remove Software
OR enter this command : pirut

Good Luck

Btw, i would be VERY VERY VERY VERY careful about just entering random commands to BASH. Especially if you are ROOT. one command can kill your system! Be careful of the following command:

 rm 

Unless you know exactly what it does do not use it!
Rm will delete the target. There are alot of other dangerous commands. Just avoid entering commands you don't understand. There are people on forums like this who like to tell people to enter dangerous commands for fun. I am not accusing anyone, i haven't seen it happen here but i have seen it on Linux forums.

Good luck man, and be careful.

[no2pencil]

Delta_Echo, on 22 May, 2008 - 02:56 AM, said:

Especially if you are ROOT. one command can kill your system! Be careful of the following command:

 rm 

Unless you know exactly what it does do not use it!

Good rm protection:

alias rm='rm -i'

Forces you to say yes to every file that the system tries to remove.

[Delta_Echo]

Ya, forgot about that. Thanks no2pencil.

[Tom9729]

If you're going to be installing packages, I recommend using Synaptic to do so. You can install it with apt-get install synaptic as root. You'll need to run it as root.

Pidgin compiles fine in Debian Etch. I made a package for the most recent version (I didn't set the dependencies right though so it's probably no good to you). Compile errors are mostly easy to find. It will usually tell you just what's wrong (ex. "Error: GTK version > 2.6 not found", which means that your version of the GTK library is too old and you need to install a newer one). Sometimes the error messages will be a bit more cryptic, but post them up here and someone will tell you what they're about. Last resort can always be a Google search of some of the more relevent lines.

Just use Gaim. It's in the Debian Etch repositories already, and TBH there is nothing wrong with it.

Here is my /etc/apt/sources.list by the way (a list of software repositories).

## Debian Etch CDrom
# deb file:///cdrom/ etch main

## Apt-Build Repo
# deb file:/var/cache/apt-build/repository/ apt-build main

## Main Package Repos
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib

## Security Updates
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

## Unofficial Packages
deb http://ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free restricted
deb-src http://ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free restricted

## Media
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main

## Skype
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

## Sun's Looking Glass Repo
deb http://javadesktop.org/lg3d/debian/ stable contrib

## Backports
deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ etch-backports main contrib non-free

## Debian Mentors
# deb-src http://mentors.debian.net/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

## Google Software
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free

# Compiz Fusion
# deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/shames/debian-etch/desktopfx/snapshot/ ./

## Opera
# deb http://deb.opera.com/opera-beta/ stable non-free

## Star Control II
deb http://uqm.debian.net/ unstable/

## Wine
deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/

## More backports
deb http://debian.stdout.at/ ./

## VLC
deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sid main
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sid main

## MMS
deb http://www.prodeia.de/mms/etch binary/
deb-src http://www.prodeia.de/mms source/

## Tovid
deb http://tovid.sourceforge.net/download/debian etch contrib
deb-src http://tovid.sourceforge.net/download/debian etch contrib

## Beryl
#deb http://debian.beryl-project.org/ etch main
#deb-src http://debian.beryl-project.org/ etch main

## MORE backports
#deb http://hype.sourceforge.jp/f etch backports
#deb-src http://hype.sourceforge.jp/f etch backports

## SSH menu applet
deb http://sshmenu.sourceforge.net/debian stable contrib

## Interreality3d
#deb http://interreality.org/software/debian etch main

## Geole
deb http://debian.geole.info/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://debian.geole.info/ etch main contrib non-free

## Geole backports
deb http://debian.geole.info/ etch-backports main contrib non-free
deb-src http://debian.geole.info/ etch-backports main contrib non-free

## VirtualBox
deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian etch non-free 

I would recommend staying away from Wine and just looking for Linux versions of programs you want. You'll be surprised to find that most things you would want to run in Linux already exist in one form or another as native (free) programs. If you're having trouble finding them, post the Windows version's name here and we'll try to match it up with it's Linux analog.

People who say Linux is hard just don't like to read.

This post has been edited by Tom9729: 23 May 2008 - 08:21 PM

[Delta_Echo]

Amen to that tom