Installing ET on Linux Box

(SJ_Frankenstein) #1

Mandrake 9.1, KDE desktop

It downloaded but when I tried to open and install nothing happens. Thought I would try Linux out for giggles but man it’s hella frustrating. I’ve tried right clicking and Open but it doesn’t do a thing. I’m pretty sure I d/l’d the right file.

Am I overlooking something? I’m new to Linux and honestly know very little about it. I thought I would give Mandrake a try and see how it plays on my machine.

AMD 2100+
A7N8X Deluxe Mobo
768 M PC3200
nVidia ti4200

Will I even see a performance boost to make this worth while?

btw: I did do a search but with 1148 results found and 90% not even close to what I asked for I thought I would skip right to asking.

(The_Jesus_Zeppelin) #2

oooooooo problems!

(pgh) #3

Wouldnt it be better if you just didnt post ‘Jesus’… what the hell is the above going to do for the problem?

Like yourself though m8, I never have and never will touch Linux, at least until it gets a decent face lift o.0 or cba doing it myself so im not much use to you. But, to check… what file was it you downloaded? And…

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/33/2003/10/4/106557

or, from the same site a quick go over is:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/33/2003/10/4/107125 for the above.

(The_Jesus_Zeppelin) #4

Wouldnt it be better if you just didnt post ‘Jesus’… what the hell is the above going to do for the problem

Thanks for the advice, but i was hoping to edit after i found this thread.

http://enemy-territory.4players.de:1041/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3774&highlight=linux+install

that might help, if not www.enemy-territory.com seems to have alot of threads about linux and et.

(pgh) #5

Find first, post later.

(BondyBoy007) #6

Are you actually having problems installing Mandrake or have you got that installed and are now trying to get ET to run on your new operating system?

It seems to me that you have downloaded a file for the installation of Mandrake and now don’t know what to do with it, am I correct in assuming this?

(SJ_Frankenstein) #7

v42, sorry if my post wasn’t clear. Mandrake installed fine, it was getting the et-2.56-2.x86.run file to open or execute the install. I was able to open a su session and to install ET. Also, found another way of install it too.

But now I can’t get the game to execute. Even if I try to open it from the start menu (i know this is not linux nomenclature but…) it seems to be loading, screen goes blank but dumps right back to the desktop. Remember, this is a fresh install of Mandrake so now could it be that I need drivers?

v43, piggy

(Bludd) #8

Mandrake is based on Redhat, and therefore uses the .rpm installation system, so I would assume you will want et-for-linux.rpm <–note .rpm, not tar.gz (unless that’s the only way ET for linny is distributed) or some such name. Unfortunately, Mandrake is just about the only Linux I havn’t used, since I started with Redhat then moved along to more and more difficult to install and manage distros.

Anyway, just look for a “package manager” or something similar on your system, and it will have MAN files to explain how to install an .rpm (it’s getting VERY point-and-click as time goes by, shouldn’t be too hard).

Good luck.

(SJ_Frankenstein) #9

v43, Bludd. I made comment to finding a new way and that is what I came up with. Something I didn’t know till I began hunting around earlier this morning. :slight_smile:

(BondyBoy007) #10

v42, sorry if my post wasn’t clear. Mandrake installed fine, it was getting the et-2.56-2.x86.run file to open or execute the install. I was able to open a su session and to install ET. Also, found another way of install it too.

But now I can’t get the game to execute. Even if I try to open it from the start menu (i know this is not linux nomenclature but…) it seems to be loading, screen goes blank but dumps right back to the desktop. Remember, this is a fresh install of Mandrake so now could it be that I need drivers?

v43, piggy[/quote]

That’s cleared that up thanks, unfortunately the only flavour of Linux I’ve ever installed is RedHat and I never tried any sort of games on that, so I’m a bit shite when it comes to trying to help u

v45

[edit=two posts above sound helpful, I was just slow pressing submit]

(evilsock) #11

You know, if you haven’t any Unix skills yet, then this is quite a project to begin with. I dunno how things have progressed with the installer process for Linux, but I would spend some times understanding basics such as;

a) Is this a server build, workstation or custom?
b) Are your hardware devices supported?
c) How will you layout your disk (think about /var)
d) Which services do you want to be compiled into your kernel at installtime (and avoid insmods)
e) What default deamons do you want to run each time automatically?

I would run the installation of Unix for about six months as an admin getting used to controlling your box and understanding the ways Unix works and maybe geting some scripting skills under your belt - THEN I would consider installing ET :open_mouth:

*nix = 80% planning, 20$ doing
M$ = 20% planning, 20% doing, 60% fixing

my 0.02

*shit - 6 posts went by before this one made … Out of date now.

(pgh) #12

Problem lies in OpenGL I bet.

Check that Linux FAQ site I gave you earlier m8… theres a post there about someone having a similar problem due to Dx, OpenGl and drivers.

(SJ_Frankenstein) #13

v43, again. Thought I was going outta mind there for a minute. Just needed a little nudge in the right direction. I’ll let you know what I find.

Another thought is that I may need to change the permissions on the executable now? nevermind…

Franky

(Lekdevil.NL) #14

v43, again. Thought I was going outta mind there for a minute. Just needed a little nudge in the right direction. I’ll let you know what I find.[/quote]

Yes. I get the feeling you haven’t installed the nVidia drivers for Linux yet, which will give you problems running any OpenGL program. Go to the nVidia web site and download the Linux driver installer. It’s quite good, although editing your XFconfig can be daunting the first time around. Just follow the instructions in the readme, as they are quite clear.

Also, to check if your drivers are the problem, do not start ET with the “Run program…” thing (or whatever it’s called in KDE) but open a shell window first. Then, start ET by just entering “et” in the shell. You’ll see a lot of messages rushing by, and I think you’ll spot a “Could not load OpenGL subsystem” error in there. That will confirm your driver problem.

Another thought is that I may need to change the permissions on the executable now?

No. If you install ET as root, the files will be readable for all users. No need to change any file permissions.

(SCDS_reyalP) #15

FWIW, assuming both are correctly configured and using drivers a of a similar vintage, there should be no significant performance difference in ET between windows and linux. The limiting factor is raw CPU/GPU power, not OS overhead.

If you want to do this as a learning experience, that is good, but don’t expect magic gains to your FPS.

You can use linux to get better network performance, if you share your connection. see http://lartc.org/

(SuperIQMan) #16

I would’ve normally thought the same, but it appear that ET performs actually better on my Linux installation than on Windows 2000. At least it is noticeable on my now old Duron 800 MHz with 256Mb and a GeForce 2 MX 200 32Mb. And my Windows installation was clean, no backround tasks or anything, and my Linux install is not specially tweaked, i didn’t recompiled the kernel for example, it’s a standard Slackware installation, with the nVidia drivers.

For example, on Windows, I had a slight firerate drop depending on where I was looking/firing at. Also I had FPS drops on the beginning of a map when i was looking around (I suppose it’s when textures get loaded when you look for the first time at something ?). On Linux, all these problems magically vanished.

Note that maybe I overlooked something, but that’d definitely hurt my bottom.

vgb

(SCDS_reyalP) #17

Hmmm, interesting to know. I could see on that low spec a system, differences in memory management etc might make some difference, since 256 megs is pretty tight for ET. I also suspect win2k would be using more memory, so maybe in windows you get FPS drop from swapping.

I stand corrected :moo:

(leifhv) #18

I’m running ET on Mandrake 9.2 and it works great. Starts correctly both from command line and from the KDE menu.

But as others have suggested you must install the NVidia drivers…don’t really remember but I don’t think they were installed by the Mandrake install process.

After installing the drivers you must edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file…as far as I remember this involves commenting out one line and changing another. Read the documentation for the driver file.

Can’t say I’ve notices any big performance differences between the Win32 and Linux version but my computer is quite good so I don’t really care much about that.

lh04

(SJ_Frankenstein) #19

v43 all…afk right at the moment with this one but the comments have been helpful so far…just a lot to digest for one so green with linux, luv the penguin! can’t wait to figure out what simple little thing LOL, it’ll turn out to be. May need some more clarification on command line with Mandrake.

1nce again thank u…

franky

(duke'ku) #20

have you tried cding to the directory the file was downloaded to and using ./et-installer-name-whatever-it-was-called?

that should do the trick.