RH9 + DVD = Dilemm

[johngrinham]

New to linux, installed Red Hat 9, have so far succeeded installing two programs off the net, but have NOT succeeded with any programs supplied with the distro. Frustrating!! I bought a Linux Format magazine with a DVD attached. On thet DVD is a version of Linux called JAMD which is pre setup for multimedia. Being a musician I figured multimedia was the best direction for me. However, RH9 won't read the DVD. (and of couse the one program that might have read it (xine) wouldn't install). It would appear that I will have to go back to windows to read the DVD, create an ISO and burn it so that I can install a version of linux. Is that irony or what ???

Ok, there is a question, (directed mainly to those who may have used JAMD) is it worth the effort to install JAMD, or should I perservere with red hat, or, is there another distro that suits multimedia better. Maybe Mandrake or Suse???
Red Hat is obviously a great OS for running servers, but I don't run a server, I want to turn my computer into a recording studio.

Anyone else out there do recording on their computer???

[sarumont]

Can you not mount the DVD as you would a normal CD? What about booting from the DVD?

[Chris H]

John, JAMD is a linux distro. You don't read it in using RedHat, it is a version of RedHat setup for multimedia. So you would need to install it, just as you did your version of RedHat.

??

[Chris H]

Or you can just use your existing RedHat. This link might help

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4814

[johngrinham]

Thanks to you three whoanswered,
to sarumont, maybe it could have been mounted, but as a beginner I have no Idea how do that, (i haven't been able to mount my flash drive yet, even with help from the articles I've seen in this forum)

to Chris H, yes it is a red hat distro, but on a dvd that red hat ignores.
The link you gave me looks real interesting, I will follow it up.

I did go back to windows and burned the iso image to a cd from which i was able to install JAMD. However I'm still sorta stuck, there are quite a few audio programs with it but as my experience has gone so far, they won't install.
The instructions are always made to look simple, but I don't see instructions telling me where to find the dependencies that are required. All in all windows is looking better all the time, and I had really hoped linux was ready for the desktop because I would like to get away from windows.

[lordnothing]

I wouldn't give up on Linux just yet.. I would recommend a distro like SuSE or Mandrake over RH... (I never have liked RH all that much..) If you want to learn more about your system, try a more advanced distro like Slack, Gentoo, or Debian..

[flw]

If you want to learn more about your system, try a more advanced distro like Slack, Gentoo, or Debian..

Do you mean learning about linux and using it for general applications, or compiling source code and or modifying it as a developer? i.e. edit a conf file vs compile a app/routine in witten in C or even scripting in perl.

[lordnothing]

i meant more about how to configure and maintain your system.. Gentoo is basically LFS with a source/dep manager (portage).. Pluswith those distros I named before, you can save on a lot of extra stuff being installed since you pretty much install only what you need when you need it..

[johngrinham]

I haven't given up, but I don't want to spend a lot of time learning to do things I took for granted in windows. eg red hat won't read or write ntfs, I downloaded a file to enable me to read ntfs and configured it in the fstab file, but having done that I don't need to remember what I did because I should never have to do it again. Both my windows drives now appear in /mnt.

But this install thing is frustrating, I understand that some programs require other files (such as libraries) to be present to work. But when a program comes on a CD you would think that those files required would either be there or a notice describing where to find them. I downloaded two files from the net and installed them and they worked. Out of nearly a dozen programs that are on the distro CD, NOT ONE has installed. I'm a beginner to linux, but not to computers and if it is this hard for me then how hard is it for those who just want it to work. It's disappointing.

[lordnothing]

rpm is notorious for not solving dependency issues properly.. and with linux you are somewhat required to know a bit about how to do things.. that's part of what makes it such a powerful OS.. if you want to automate a lot of stuff, i would suggest reading the bash scripting howto.. also, IIRC, SuSE is a bit more user-friendly than RH is.. it's a *tad* better about deps, too.. Mandrake is at about the same level as SuSE in user-friendliness, also..