New to Linux, First Time User Questions about Installs

Recieved my Acer Aspire one yesterday and being prepared I had already thought and had wrote down all the alternatives and linux downloads for the stuff I wanted. The first I wanted which I installed easily as I got it if from acer aspire one's website, was an advanced image creating software, I installed GIMP with no problems. Now on to my problems, firstly I wanted to find an alternive for itunes and tried to install banshee and amarok but being the linux newbie I am, they didnt work and I just got confuesed. Second thing was a game boy advance emulator, I first tried Visualboy advance, didnt work, didnt understand the SDL configuations and that stuff, tried the alternative: Gnome boy advance, still no luck, gave me an error message saying cannot execute because cannot located tmp/bin/gnomeboyadvanve. The website said I needed python, no idea what that is, tried it... got confuesed again.

Can someone help me when it comes to installing stuff or give me some suggestions on what to do? I am new to linux and these forums so sorry if this questions is in the wrong topic.

 

The first thing to do is try the add/remove programs functionality on the One - see http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=510 for details.

Generally you don't want to go downloading stuff from websites; there may be times when you have to, but that should be strictly a last resort for when the software you want is not already available in the repositories (which is what the add/remove functionality uses) or you need the latest version of the software which was only finished last week and hasn't yet made it to the repos.

 

I have no experience with I tunes,,But ive installed Limewire on my AA1 with alittle help from the people here.
http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=7653&p=50027&hilit=limewire#p50027

 

thank you, Ive enabled the rightclick on desktop and the Add/remove program and got amarok which seems to be a pretty decent alternative to itunes. Im still however having problesm with the game boy advance emulator.

 

Amarok is very good; it certainly does all I've wanted with music!

The emulator; I've never used it so can't guide you from personal experience. Could you take us stage by stage through what you are doing and what error messages arise? Basically, start again with the Gnome Boy one, tell us where the instructions are and what commands you are putting in, and copy & paste error messages into posts here.

The error you've quoted looks a bit odd to start with, as programs shouldn't rely on finding files in /tmp when they are starting up (since /tmp is for temporary files and can be wiped pretty much at any time - it usually won't survive a reboot, for example!)

Python is a programming language and quite a few things need it to be there; I can't remember whether it's installed by default on the One. If you open a terminal and do

Code:

which python

then either you'll get an error saying it's not found, or the system will respond with

Code:

/usr/bin/python

...in which case it is already installed.

 

ok, thanks for showing me how to see if I had python and the terminal said what you thought it would so I do have it. As for the error message, it came up with in a new window:

Failed to execute file "GnomeBoyAdvance".
Failed to execute child process "/usr/bin/gnomeboyadvance" (No such file or directory).

sorry I made a mistake in my orignal post, anyways I checked the location and saw that the directory was there and that there was a python script called ”gameboyadvance“ I dont know what the problem is

 

Good, that's one thing out of the way!

The error message quotes a filename of gnomeboyadvance; you say there is a file called gameboyadvance, which is different. Is that a typo?

Could you post a partial directory listing here - in terminal:

Code:

cd /usr/bin/
ls -la | grep boy

(to explain, that goes to the directory concerned, then does a list of all files in long format, and displays only the ones including the characters 'boy'. I'm using the terminal since it provides output it's easy to copy into a post, whereas a graphical interface would mean screenshots and things).