1. Can't get my dvds to work.
2. Can't get my speakers to work.
3. Can't get my mp3, wma etc to work.
4. How the hell do I install programs.

Please help a linux newbie.

Anyone?

Also do i need to install linux drivers for my Gforce graphics card. Plz help.

Haven't used Ubuntu in a while, but you install stuff either via synaptic (GUI) or apt-get (CLI). As for .mp3 support, it doesn't have it out of the box (main reason I dumped it the second time was the stuff it doesn't have by default). For nvidia drivers, there might be some in one of the repositories (you'll have to check with synaptic or apt), otherwise you might have to get them from nvidia's site. You'll probably get more specific help from ubuntuforums.org though.

to install programs use the synaptic package managaer or open up a console and do:

apt-get update

then either apt-get upgrade OR apt-get install (packagename)

To get nvidia drivers, dvd and mp3 support download automatix(dvd support is illegal in the USA)

This is way too complicated.

At least the internet works, to my surprise.

My speakers don't even work, yet when I put in the mandrake move boot from cd Os it detected it fine?

Is Ubuntu the best linux distro for a newbie?

I installed that automatix.

For a moment the sound worked when I did a reboot. Now it doesn't.


I'm not impressed. And now I get an error every time I run automatix.

what soundcard is it?

if its a dell PC you need a BIOS update

Fairly simple for most of your problems; you're just missing a lot of drivers that need to be installed and downloaded.

For your graphics card, head over to Nvidia and download the Linux drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Get the model of your sound card, and google it and "linux driver". You'll likely get instructions on how to set it up on Linux.

As far as I know, WMA can't natively be played on Linux due to propretiary Microsoft codecs. If you want, you can install Wine and use it to run Windows Media Player. For MP3s, you should have a default player instalelled, although you may want to find a better one.

And as for installing programs, you can either use apt-get if the program is in the Debian respiratory (most programs) or if not, you can usually download a .deb file and use dpckg:
dpkg -i something.deb

Hope this helps

I think WMA format is fine (given the right codecs) but DRM'ed files won't work. All my files are .mp3 though, so I can't say for sure...