New to Ubuntu? What do I do

So I'm new to the whole Ubnutu / Lynix thing and find it all somewhat confusing. There are a crapload of new terms and things I honestly don't understand. I need my laptop to function like a basic windows machine with no bells and whistles. I'm not a software developer or what have you, I just want internet and music playing capabilities. So far I tried loading straight Ubuntu to my laptop but I don't think that's what I wanted. It seemed to just want to run off the CD-rom drive and I couldn't find any options to reformat the hard drive to get the old windows OS and files off of it.

So now I am trying Xubuntu which looks more along the lines of what I wanted.

Now here lies the next set of questions. I understand that there is the need to install a media player of some sort. The site reccomended one but the installation instructions were way over my head. Is it as hard as it looks?

I'll think of a few more I'm sure, and post them here. The CD is almost done burning so I'm going to fire it up here shortly.

[tonight.we.dine.in.hell]

wow. its linux, but you need to click the big install icon on the desktop, then ask other questions here. if you cant handle ubuntu, stick with windows

[Prometheum]

Xubuntu IS Ubuntu, one uses XFCE and one uses GNOME. They're the exact same damn thing.

OK OK I got it. For some reason Ubuntu would load up with a white screen and arrow but wouldn't load the desktop, Xubuntu seemed to work though, so I installed that.

So some more followup questions. I have a linksys PCMCIA card for wireless 802.11g. Xub didn't seem to want to run the setup program for it. What do I do in this case? I'm going to look and see if linksys has a linyx program for it but I don't know...

Volume control: I found some sort of volume control menu but didn't see how you change the values. When I ran the demo movie I could control the program on the media player but couldn't find anything like the traditional windows speaker icon on the desktop, that would be very useful to me.

Media player: What are you guys running? I want something that will play most popular types if possible, CD, MP3, .mpeg

Thanks!

[RDProgrammer]

I would advise going back to the regular Ubuntu, I use it and love it, but it is a matter of personal choice so no need for a flame war. If it wouldn't load, try again, or boot it in safe graphics mode and install from there.

I could walk you through the rest of the stuff in Ubuntu but don't know the ins and outs of Xubuntu.

RDP

it's linux not lynix

Originally Posted by radioman

Media player: What are you guys running? I want something that will play most popular types if possible, CD, MP3, .mpeg

Thanks!

Get VLC or mplayer.

VLC:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html

Almost everything you will need to know about getting Ubuntu set up to an optimal level (I used this back when I was new and it helped me learn a lot)

I hope you're not intimidating by the command line... there's a lot of it here, but it's mostly copy+pasting so it's not that hard.

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Gutsy

have you familiarized yourself with the terminal?, it is similar to windows command prompt but much more powerful. Once I started using it it made my life much easier.

if you open up your terminal and type

sudo apt-get install libxine-extracodecs

then you should be able to use your native music player. I am a big fan of xmms as a music player(similar to winamp). I haven't used the apt repos in a while, but i assume that you could run

sudo apt-get install xmms xmms-mp3

for video players, if you want a super easy time then install VLC.

sudo apt-get install vlc libdvdcss2

I, however am more fond of mplayer these days. (since i switched to fedora i find that it plays cleaner).

for controlling volume, alsa is your friend. in terminal type:

alsamixer

here you can enable and disable audio features and change volume. to enable/disable a feature use the keystroke 'm'

also note that the ubuntuguide wiki's (as posted in a post above) are great resources.

[RDProgrammer]

Originally Posted by tonight.we.dine.in.hell

wow. its linux, but you need to click the big install icon on the desktop, then ask other questions here. if you cant handle ubuntu, stick with windows

Thanks for being a douche to people wanting to switch over.

RDP

Thanks for the tips. I took a computer class about 4 years ago in college that we used alot of linux to make simple programs but I don't remember too much.

Mr. Fibble has my curiosity going on the terminal now. When I type in the commands you mention, what exactly is it doing? Is it initializing programs that are already on the OS or do I have to be connected to the net so that it can download them?

Any more thoughts on the linksys wireless card? If I can get that and a decent media player going on my laptop I would be stoked.