Help with Linux: setting up 3D acceleration, sound, and XGL

I've tried going through all the linux forums, and using all of their supposed, "how to"s and tutorials to try and get the sound blaster live 5.1 card to work, my nvidia geforce fx card to be recognized, and install XGL... I haven't been able to do ANY of them successfully. I know absolutely nothing about Linux and I'm just trying to learn as I go, but none of these make any sense to me whatsoever. I've tried installing the f*cking video drivers 12 times and the terminal STILL tells me I haven't installed anything. I'm running the newest distro of ubuntu, and I'd like to think I'm computer savvy enough to figure this out and get everything working, but I can't. No matter where I look, nothing seems to work right. They've got me sudo apt-get installing software that it can't find, among other things... PLEASE someone, can you put this stuff into the terms someone such as myself can understand and that ACTUALLY WORK unlike this other jargon???

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finchx6

just a quick note, most of the commands these so called tutorials for newbies are telling me to enter into the terminal aren't even working or returning the information that they should!!

Oh, and this is the link to the supposed BEST tutorial for the graphics and xgl

http://knowledge76.com/index.php/XGL/Compiz_Nvidia_32bit

finchx6

I actually got all my sound and video working great... Now I'm stuck trying to figure out XGL. I had it running for a short time, rebooted the computer, and it was completely screwed, and I'd made no changes before rebooting. So I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I know for a fact that several other distros, INCLUDING mandriva come with XGL and compiz or beryl already included in the OS software... And anytime I look up how to install and get XGL running, I screw it up, and have to go back in, and format it again, and then reinstall it, only to screw it up yet, again... If these other distros have it included, why is the installation so difficult and complicated??? I read on a page that its very easy... thats funny. Did they find some other way I keep missing or what? Because all the crap you've got to go through to get XGL working sucks and just saying it pisses me off, is an understatement. Would it be so difficult to make just like..a deb install for this??? Call me lazy or stupid, both are probably true, but I feel as though its something to think about. I mean, if they can make Automatrix and Easyubuntu which install a lot of 3rd party software for you, why can't they do the same thing for the xgl??

Philippatos

Try a commercial distro like Mandriva Power Pack. It comes with a lot of proprietary driver and installs them automagically, including ATI's and nVidia's.

FWIW, same thing happened to Red Hat and SuSE when they went from commercial to "free". All the proprietary drivers were removed and the install process became much more difficult.

Here are a couple screenshots of my hardware accelerated Linux desktop, using Fedora Core 6:
http://4crito.com/screenshots/de.jpg
http://4crito.com/screenshots/de2.jpg
I believe FC6 uses the competitor to XGL, AIGLX though. All I had to do is install the nVidia driver and enable desktop effects in gnome to get it working, anyway.

Here's a pic of the PC itself

Just built it.