[Jordan_Hounsell]

First of all, I'm a complete linux newbie. I just managed to get linux up and running on my system yesterday. I'm using Fedora Core 4.

1st Question: My sound quaity is shit. Sometimes I will get a headache from listening to music. I know my soundcard and speakers can preform better because they worked fine on windows xp. Im using onboard sound, Realtek AC97 sound. How could I go about fixing this?

2nd Question: I'm having problems installing aplications. I've managed to install and use xmms to listen to mp3's but thats it. I've read the guides on installing apps but they dont come across as much help. First app im trying to get up and running is thunderbird. I'm assuming its already compiled because it didn't say it was source on the website and ./configure doesn't exist. I have it extracted but which file do I execute? Another app im trying to install is ABC (Yet Another Bittorrent Client). I've downloaded the source from http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net/download.php but I can't compile it. I go through all of the steps used in this guide --> http://www.linuxforums.org/tutorials...ial-19957.html but I only get as far as ./configure. It says ./configure: no such file or directory. Whats with that?

All help is very much apreciated!

[Cabhan]

Almost all source that you download will have a README file in it. Check that for installation instructions.

Firefox, for example, has you do

./firefox-installer

as opposed to make and all that junk.

[aysiu]

Have you thought of using a package manager?

Fedora has Yum:

http://www.fedorafaq.org/#installsoftware

I prefer Synaptic Package Manager, though:

http://www.psychocats.net/essays/winuxinstall.php

[bigtomrodney]

Silly question time - when you got the source, did you unarchive (unzip) it and then change directory to the source? When you are in the directory run

ls

and let us see the output. (It's just a listing of what's in thee directory, only if you're still having trouble with it).

For the sound problems, I find sometimes the PCM channel gets really crunchy when above 75% in the mixer. It's just standard digital distortion but it sounds appauling. You can check it in alsamixer.

[Jordan_Hounsell]

[root@localhost ABC-Linux-V.2.4.3]# ls
abc.conf abc.py~ btmaketorrentgui.py license.txt
abcdetailframe.py abc_tweak.py clean.bat makedist.bat
abcengine.py aboutmedlg.py filemanager.py maketest.bat
abc.ini announce.lst getscrapedata.py readme.txt
abc.nsi BitTorrent globaluploaddlg.py scheduler.py
abcoptiondlg.py btcompletedirgui.py guimanager.py setupabc.py
abcoptiondlg.py~ btcompletedir.py icon_abc.ico torrent
abc.py btmakemetafile.py interconn.py torrent.lst


Yeah im pretty sure I did that right. Never thought of a package manager, will give that a try. When I changed the volume control to 75% it did wonders! thanks!

[Jordan_Hounsell]

Also having a problem using rpm's. Whenevr i issue a comand it just goes to the next line and is blank as if nothing happened. For example:

[root@localhost ~]# yum -y localinstall jre-1_5_0_04-linux-i586.rpm
(Blinking Cursor)

another example:

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -i jre-1_5_0_04-linux-i586.rpm

[lakerdonald]

The second one (rpm) is supposed to be silent unless it fails.
Try with the "-iv" flag instead of "-i" if you want to see what's going on.

[Jordan_Hounsell]

Same thing happens when i use -iv instead of -i. How can I be sur it was installed?

[lakerdonald]

That's not right. It should tell you everything that it does with the -v flag...Try reinstalling rpm.

[Jordan_Hounsell]

I could spend 45 minutes trying to find out how to do that or you could tell me how