I'm a Linux noob, need help

[Mikko Lehtinen]

The angband package is the same one in Debian and Ubuntu.

I use Debian with XFCE. Debian is lighter than Ubuntu (less background processes running) and somewhat more complicated than Ubuntu. Ubuntu is friendlier for newbies.

I haven't used Zorin but it gets positive reviews.

[Ghoane]

I'm not exactly a Linux expert, but I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.

It sounds like you don't like the Unity desktop on Ubuntu. I can't blame you. I'm trying to give it a chance on my laptop and so far, I am not a fan. As Therem said, you can install alternate desktops on Ubuntu and most other distributions. GNOME, KDE, and Xfce are the big ones (and all better that Unity, in my opinion). I haven't looked much at Zorin, but I think it's based on Ubuntu and runs the GNOME desktop with some themes that make it look like Windows. You might also want to look at Mint. It's also based on Ubuntu, but it's lighter, it's popular enough that you should be able to find answers to any questions you have, and it has installable GNOME, KDE, and Xfce versions available. My laptop will likely end up a Mint Xfce machine.

My next piece of advice is to buy a book about Linux that is catered to beginners. On the web, you will find a plethora of helpful Linux users ready to help you and a lot of tutorials and forums that already have everything you'll ever want to know about Linux. Unfortunately, this information is fragmented and too often people will explain how to do something, but won't necessarily explain what the commands mean or why they recommend doing things a certain way, which may be fine for the experienced Linux user that is looking for advice on a specific problem, but isn't much help for a beginner. It took me six months of working with Linux to finally realize this, but my learning rate spiked exponentially once I finally did.

If you plan on installing a new version of Linux anyway, I would recommend compiling Angband on Ubuntu first, just so that you can get the experience. It's not every day that you get to experiment on an OS that you'll be installing over in a few days! Compiling is a way of life on Linux and if you're like me, you'll appreciate the fine tuning you can do when compiling from source versus installing from the software manager or package manager. I think that Vanilla Angband is a good candidate for your first compile on Linux, as it will compile without too much fuss. Let me know if you want detailed instructions, and I will post them. As I said, I'm no expert, but I was a Linux noob not so long ago, so I still remember most of the questions that I had when I was starting out.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

You might also want to look at Mint. It's also based on Ubuntu, but it's lighter, it's popular enough that you should be able to find answers to any questions you have, and it has installable GNOME, KDE, and Xfce versions available. My laptop will likely end up a Mint Xfce machine.

Both Mint and Xfce are very good choices.

Mint has two flavours: Ubuntu-based and Debian-based. The Ubuntu-based version isn't lighter than Ubuntu, at least not by much, but the Debian-based is. Like the devs say themselves: "It's faster and more responsive than Ubuntu-based editions. Debian is a less user-friendly/desktop-ready base than Ubuntu. Expect some rough edges."

[Malak Darkhunter]

I can use ubuntu easy ad a windows installer, to multi- partition, but what I want to do is reformat the hardrive and only run Linux, but I have had no luck with the boot installers. Tried installing debian, zorin, and ubuntu from the startup boot menu, but both my computers don't read the disks, or USB I have created from iso images. I am burning the program correctly onto disks, but no luck. Even tried changing boot order from bios to boot from internal cd first or USB, but they just skipped over and it goes straight to windows. I have tried DVD for debian and zorin, USB for ubuntu but I can't seem to get my computer to read these devices on startup boot options, and yes they do work correctly so I am actually a little stumped now, ubuntu is the only thing I can get to install by the windows installer which puts it in another partition on the hard drive, anybody have these same issues when trying to install these programs? Using winrar,winzip to convert iso images onto dvds

[Therem Harth]

Using winrar,winzip to convert iso images onto dvds

If I'm reading that right, that is your problem. You can't extract the contents and then burn them to a DVD, because that will miss copying the boot sector , and the resulting DVD won't boot. You have to burn the image to the DVD wholesale, using a dedicated burning program such as Infrarecorder on Windows or Brasero on Ubuntu - both of those have options to "burn an image."

Alternatively you can use UNetbootin to put a bootable Linux system on an empty, formatted USB device.

[Malak Darkhunter]

If I'm reading that right, that is your problem. You can't extract the contents and then burn them to a DVD, because that will miss copying the boot sector , and the resulting DVD won't boot. You have to burn the image to the DVD wholesale, using a dedicated burning program such as Infrarecorder on Windows or Brasero on Ubuntu - both of those have options to "burn an image."

Alternatively you can use UNetbootin to put a bootable Linux system on an empty, formatted USB device.

So do you mean to burn the iso image just like it is onto the disk, I thought it had to be converted out of iso to be readable, or is their a method of extracting I'm missing? I did this once with
windows 8 release preview, but it took a few tries.

Or are you meaning extract to: DVD and then burn?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A right kind of a program, like the Infrarecorder, just takes the iso and burns it to the disk. The user doesn't need to worry about any other steps.

Maybe this Beginner Geek article might help you?

[Malak Darkhunter]

A right kind of a program, like the Infrarecorder, just takes the iso and burns it to the disk. The user doesn't need to worry about any other steps.

Maybe this Beginner Geek article might help you?

Okay thanks I will try that when I get home, thanks guys

[Malak Darkhunter]

And infrarecorder worked great, I went ahead and installed zorin 06 and it is like ubuntu but with a windows menu interface, with a somewhat similar start button on the bottom so far i like it.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Zorin comes with wine-play on Linux already installed so it was a simple thing to download angband 3.4 windows and play it normally on wine, so far I'm liking the os pretty good, it's basically ubuntu but has a windows makeover to make things easier in finding things through menus and it's lts-long term support for 5 years same as ubuntu.

Now my next question is, playing angband through play on Linux, does it still save the games the same as normally on Linux?Same file destinations?

[bron]

Glad to hear you're up and running.

[Therem Harth]

Now my next question is, playing angband through play on Linux, does it still save the games the same as normally on Linux?Same file destinations?

No, the Linux version saves games in $HOME/.angband whereas the Windows version saves them in lib/save relative to wherever Angband is installed.

[Derakon]

Now my next question is, playing angband through play on Linux, does it still save the games the same as normally on Linux?Same file destinations?

Therem already answered this, but to clarify: when you use WINE, the program you run has no idea it's not on a Windows machine (albeit one with an unusual filesystem). The only reason it would save things in the same place as the Linux version saves things is if both the Linux and Windows versions were separately programmed to do the same thing -- and in that case, at least one of them would be violating the recommended program behavior for its OS.

[Malak Darkhunter]

No, the Linux version saves games in $HOME/.angband whereas the Windows version saves them in lib/save relative to wherever Angband is installed.

Got that, easily found, i'm used to windows file managment, should be in great shape now for future competitions, playing, editing, while I learn how to use linux and compiling,(If I really even need to). Anyway thanks all

[jozmon]

Ok heres my terminal i am having issues HELP

if you can help i will be happy thank you in advance, you want to scroll to bottom to see the errors, i really like the older versions but want newer...

curs3@TH3CURS3-Satellite-A105:~/Downloads/angband-v3.5.0$ ./configure --with-out-install
configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --with-out-install
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking target system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for tput... /usr/bin/tput
configure: touching .deps files
Note: You have chosen to compile for installation, with data files
in standard locations. For development, you may wish to consider using
--with-no-install which will leave the game to run from the directory
into which it was extracted and compiled.

checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables...
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether ln -s works... yes
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for windres... no
checking for rm... /bin/rm
checking for mv... /bin/mv
checking for cp... /bin/cp
checking for dirent.h that defines DIR... yes
checking for library containing opendir... none required
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep
checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking fcntl.h usability... yes
checking fcntl.h presence... yes
checking for fcntl.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... (cached) yes
checking for stdbool.h that conforms to C99... yes
checking for _Bool... yes
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking return type of signal handlers... void
checking for mkdir... yes
checking for setresgid... yes
checking for setegid... yes
checking for stat... yes
checking if gcc supports -Wno-missing-field-initializers... yes
checking if make supports SysV-style inclusion... yes
checking for make silent include syntax... gnu
checking for ncursesw5-config... /usr/bin/ncursesw5-config
checking for ncurses - wide char support... no
*** Could not run ncurses test program, checking why...
*** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
*** exact error that occured. This usually means ncursesw was incorrectly
*** installed or that you have moved ncursesw since it was installed. In the
*** latter case, you may want to edit the ncursesw5-config script:
*** /usr/bin/ncursesw5-config
checking for mvwaddnwstr... no
checking for use_default_colors... no
checking for can_change_color... no
checking for X... no
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating mk/buildsys.mk
config.status: creating mk/extra.mk
config.status: creating mk/sinclude.mk
config.status: creating src/autoconf.h
configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --with-out-install

Configuration:

Install path: /usr/local
binary path: /usr/local/games
config path: /usr/local/etc/angband/
lib path: /usr/local/share/angband/
doc path: /usr/local/share/doc/angband/
var path: (not used)
(with private save and score files in ~/.angband/Angband/)

-- Frontends --
- Curses No; missing libraries
- X11 No; missing libraries
- SDL Disabled
- Windows Disabled
- Test No
- Stats No

- SDL sound Disabled
curs3@TH3CURS3-Satellite-A105:~/Downloads/angband-v3.5.0$ make
Entering directory src.
Entering directory monster.
Leaving directory monster.
Entering directory object.
Leaving directory object.
Entering directory player.
Leaving directory player.
Successfully generated dependencies.
Successfully compiled attack.c.
Successfully compiled birth.c.
Successfully compiled cave.c.
Successfully compiled cmd-cave.c.
Successfully compiled cmd-context.c.
Successfully compiled cmd-know.c.
Successfully compiled cmd-misc.c.
Successfully compiled cmd-obj.c.
Successfully compiled cmd-pickup.c.
Successfully compiled cmd-process.c.
Successfully compiled death.c.
Successfully compiled debug.c.
Successfully compiled dungeon.c.
Successfully compiled effects.c.
Successfully compiled files.c.
Successfully compiled game-cmd.c.
Successfully compiled game-event.c.
Successfully compiled generate.c.
Successfully compiled grafmode.c.
Successfully compiled guid.c.
Successfully compiled history.c.
Successfully compiled init.c.
Successfully compiled keymap.c.
Successfully compiled load.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-init.c.
Successfully compiled monster/melee1.c.
Successfully compiled monster/melee2.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-list.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-lore.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-make.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-msg.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-power.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-spell.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-timed.c.
Successfully compiled monster/mon-util.c.
Successfully compiled object/chest.c.
Successfully compiled object/identify.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-desc.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-flag.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-info.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-list.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-make.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-power.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-ui.c.
Successfully compiled object/obj-util.c.
Successfully compiled object/pval.c.
Successfully compiled object/randart.c.
Successfully compiled object/slays.c.
Successfully compiled option.c.
Successfully compiled parser.c.
Successfully compiled randname.c.
Successfully compiled pathfind.c.
Successfully compiled prefs.c.
Successfully compiled player/calcs.c.
Successfully compiled player/class.c.
Successfully compiled player/player.c.
Successfully compiled player/race.c.
Successfully compiled player/spell.c.
Successfully compiled player/timed.c.
Successfully compiled player/p-util.c.
Successfully compiled quest.c.
Successfully compiled score.c.
Successfully compiled signals.c.
Successfully compiled save.c.
Successfully compiled savefile.c.
Successfully compiled spells1.c.
Successfully compiled spells2.c.
Successfully compiled squelch.c.
Successfully compiled store.c.
Successfully compiled tables.c.
Successfully compiled target.c.
Successfully compiled trap.c.
Successfully compiled ui.c.
Successfully compiled ui-birth.c.
Successfully compiled ui-event.c.
Successfully compiled ui-knowledge.c.
Successfully compiled ui-menu.c.
Successfully compiled ui-options.c.
Successfully compiled ui-spell.c.
Successfully compiled util.c.
Successfully compiled variable.c.
Successfully compiled wiz-spoil.c.
Successfully compiled wiz-stats.c.
Successfully compiled wizard.c.
Successfully compiled x-spell.c.
Successfully compiled xtra2.c.
Successfully compiled xtra3.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg1.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg2.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg3.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg4.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg5.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg6.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg7.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg8.c.
Successfully compiled borg/borg9.c.
Successfully compiled buildid.c.
Successfully compiled z-bitflag.c.
Successfully compiled z-file.c.
Successfully compiled z-form.c.
Successfully compiled z-msg.c.
Successfully compiled z-quark.c.
Successfully compiled z-queue.c.
Successfully compiled z-rand.c.
Successfully compiled z-set.c.
Successfully compiled z-term.c.
Successfully compiled z-type.c.
Successfully compiled z-util.c.
Successfully compiled z-virt.c.
Successfully compiled z-textblock.c.
LINK angband.o
main.c:44:1: warning: ISO C forbids empty initializer braces [-Wpedantic]
{
^
main.c:43:28: error: zero or negative size array ‘modules’
static const struct module modules[] =
^
Failed to compile main.c!
make[3]: *** [main.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: *** [subdirs] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2
curs3@TH3CURS3-Satellite-A105:~/Downloads/angband-v3.5.0$