Games :: Getting Started

Hello. I am rather new to linux. I downloaded DSL a bit less than a week ago and got it installed to my Hard Drive.

Anyway, I am wanting to run more Opensource games (such as those I find at happypenguin.org), but most of them seem to require SDL or something of that sort. I, most unfortunately, must do any of my downloading in windows as I have a winmodem, and cannot connect to the net in Linux, and so, cannot use apt get.

Do I even need SDL? Does this XFree86 I've seen mentioned take SDL's place? If I do need SDL, how do I install it with the availiable RPM files?

I've already posted for some help in the happypenguin forums, but then I thought, "Heck, I should go to the DSL forums instead. Then its more Distro Specific."

So, any help you guys can provide this noob would be much appreciated.

You're going to have to get SDL, XFree86 doesn't take it's place. SDL is like, a games graphics engine. It takes a lot dependencies too, it might be kinda hard to get that stuff and then transfer it over..Maybe we can get your modem working. What's the problem with it that you're having?

Well, its a WINmodem, and not a hardware modem. I have some files I found a while back for winmodems under linux, but they have to be compiled, and I have no idea how to do that.

Edit: Transferring files over isn't much of a problem. I would just download them under windows, reboot in linux, and try to install them there. I've already installed a console game (lin-city) this way. In the site I found with the debian SDL packages (I'm suspecting that this is what I want, debian, right?) They had various platforms (ie, i386, Alpha, etc). Now, if I'm downloading SDL stuff for i386 platform, what should I do when certain dependancys are only availiable under platform type Alpha, for example?

Edit: I just remembered something. When I had tried to install the driverset, it searched for GCC, and other compilers, and turned up empty. I tried downloading GCC, but all I came up with was unassembled source code. Not too useful if you need a compiler in the first place. Although, maybe the fact that I was trying to download an older, smaller version might play a role in it only coming as source code.

sdl is a very, very small framebuffer graphics library.

Try this.

apt-get install libsdl1.2debian

Yeah, your best bet on how to get it is using apt-get from the command line after fixing your winmodem situation. But just in case you're wondering, getting a package just straight from the page..Well if there's a dependency for that package for your system, then that dependency does indeed exist for your system.

But you're never going to be able to make full use of Linux unless you get your internet working on it, so we might want to go over some stuff on how to compile something from source code so you can get that modem to work. It's pretty easy once you know how. I'd also recommend you get a book from the library on introducing yourself to linux's command line. Something like "How Linux Works" would probably be a good one for you. Compiling from source is just uncompressing the files, navigating to those files in a terminal, running the configure file, then type the word make, then type the words make install.
If you use an instant messaging program I could probably log onto one as well and walk you through it pretty easily, but going back and forth over the finer points of how to accomplish that can be a bit tricky on a message board.

Another option is to go to a Linux User Group in your area and have them help you out, there's LUGs all over the place and they have installfests where you can bring your compy in and they'll install and configure it for you to help you get set up. I've heard they're pretty cool. Here's the site with the groups on it:
http://www.linux.org/groups/
Here's a page on winmodems in relation to linux, if you need it:
http://start.at/modem

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