On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:06:02 +0000, sithlordzuk wrote:
> I have been wanting to take a close look at a linux system for several
> years now due to my ever increasing frustration with Microsoft.
So, just to get a feel for your level of expertise here, you’ve never
used a Linux or other unix-like system before? Have you used any other
operating systems before that weren’t some flavour of Windows?
> I have had the perfect opportunity to try Linux now and so far so good.
> I am very impressed with the look and feel of it.
Can you describe exactly what you’ve done so far here?
> To overcome this problem as I spend a fair bit of time in hotels and
> would like to mainly play games on the laptop I purchased an external
> eSATA caddy and have installed Open SUSE ver 11 on it.
So at some point you booted from an install CD, formatted this external
disk, and installed the operating system to it. Yes? And you can boot the
Linux operating system from this external disk. Yes?
> After spending
> several hours looking through forums, google searches etc I cannot work
> out how to install software to the hard drive.
There are many ways to install applications on a Linux system. The “SuSE
way” to do it is via something they call “YaST”. Depending on exactly how
and what you installed, you may have to hunt around for it, but it should
be available on the menu somewhere.
If your installed system is using the Gnome desktop, from the “Computer”
icon in the bottom left corner, click on it, then you can pick “YaST” off
the menu directly.
Once you’re in YaST, there are a bunch of options presented. Find the one
labled “Software Management” and click on it. It’ll take a few seconds of
initialization, but eventually you’ll be presented with a window with
three big buttons along the top. They are “Available”, “Upgrades”, and
“Installed”.
Ignore “Upgrades” for right now. If you click on the “Installed” button,
you will get a list of all of the applications packages that are
installed on your system right now. If you click on the “Available”
button, you’ll get a list of all of the applications packages that are
currently available that are not yet installed on your system. You can
read the names and descriptions at your leisure to find interesting
sounding ones, or you can you use the “Search” box (below “Installed”
button) to search for things you might want to install and use.
Find one that sounds interesting and click on it. Then click the
“Install” button on the lower right. YaST will add it to its list of
things to install, and will also add any other packages that the one you
selected is dependent on. So if you pick, for example, a graphics editor,
you may find that YaST needs to install a couple of graphics libraries
and a printer calibration utility, because the graphics editor depends on
having these available and they are not yet.
Once you’ve picked what you want, click the “Apply” button, and YaST will
install what you’ve asked it to. If, later, you decide that you don’t
want something you installed, use YaST again. Click on the application
you want to get rid of, and click on the “Uninstall” button.
> Evertime that the
> programs auto.exe file runs I get a message stating “Cannot find autorun
> program” when it is clearly in the directory. I have tried this with a
> number of programs now and I get the same response.
Ok, here’s where I think you may be missing something. “auto.exe” is most
likely a Windows program. If you’re not running Windows, because you’re
running Linux, then you can’t run Windows programs.
> Ideally I want to install the program for my 3G dongle, Football Manager
> and a couple of other bits.
Your 3G dongle may or may not be supported already. Or it may not be
supported at all. It depends a lot on a few factors, not the least of
which is how well the manufacturer supports Linux or open source
software. If they’re helpful, then there’s likely to be support for it.
If they’re hostile, it’s likely that your 3G dongle is only going to be
useful as a paperweight.
I don’t know what “Football Manager” is, but if it’s Windows software,
you won’t be able to install or run it on a non-Windows operating system,
just like you can’t run iPhone applications on Windows. You may have to
find a replacement for it, or live without it.
> Any help that can be provided would be extremely appreciated. I wouldn’t
> normally ask and would find the answer myself but after spending several
> hours doing internet searches I feel like I’m hitting my head against a
> brick wall.
I hope this helps. I’m not sure if it will, as it’s hard to tell what
your level of experience and knowledge of computers is. I hope that I
haven’t overshot (or undershot) the mark.
–
David Gersic dgersic_@_niu.edu
Novell Knowledge Partner http://forums.novell.com
Please post questions in the newsgroups. No support provided via email.