various newby questions

bustertech

I've installed linux on an old compac Evo with Pentium 4 processor. It used to have win 2K on it but that OS has been totally replaced by linux mint 10 Julia. I have some questions;

1) I have a wireless router and I'd like to use mac address security with it. How do you find the Mac address in linux?

2) I"ve noticed that the apps I've downloaded have no instruction on how to use them. Where do I find them. In particular OpenUniverse Space Simulator, Bos Wars, LordsAWar. They seem to have no help files attached or anything. Where do I find out how to run the apps?

3) When I run windows and go to youtube (I have realplayer on that computer) to download guitar videos, what's the simplest linux variant of realplayer to use and how do I get the app to ask me if I want to download the video like realplayer?

These three things are what's eating at me at the current time. I'll go linux all the way if I can figure out how to make the thing work. One last question....I'm a copier tech and would like to use my compac to troubleshoot copiers that are on networks. Does linux offer print drivers for all the major copiers (especially Sharp and Canon) out there? Thanks in advance. I have a feeling this is the start of a beautiful relalationship.

Goineasy9

Hi Sam, welcome to the Linux.com forums.

Let's see what info I can give you..

1) If you type ifconfig in a terminal, the hwaddr: xx.xx.xx.xx.xx is your mac address. I'm using just a wired connection at the moment, so the hwaddr that's showing is under the eth0 section. If I'm using wireless it would show up under a wlan0 section.

2) Linux has a man page for instructions for apps. Simply typing:

man <appname>

will bring up instructions for an app. However, the apps you mention are games or simulations (btw- openuniverse looks very interesting). They have manuals at their home locations. Typing OpenUniverse into google showed me that openuniverse resides on sourceforge, and there was a link for the manual there:
http://openuniverse.sourceforge.net/manual/manual.html
I'm not running any of the programs you mentioned, but, usually there are help buttons in the menus that lead back to the apps original site. Or click on the about button, that usually contains a link back to the apps home page.

3)There are many ways to download you tube videos. If you type "youtube" into your Add/Remove App search field, I'm sure you will see apps like youtube-dl, which, run in the terminal and use the videos url address. There are also addons in firefox and chrome that allow you to do a one-click download of a video. I remember realplayer, but haven't really used an app like it since I only watch youtube videos in a browser. I'm surprised realplayer is still around.

4) I know there isn't a (4) but you had another question......
You can look for open source printer drivers here:
http://www.openprinting.org/printers
I don't know whether the drivers you are using in windows are especially made for diagnosing problems or not, but, regular printer drivers are freely available. Even problem brands like Canon and Lexmark have drivers for some of their formally closed printers.

If you have any more questions, just ask......Here's looking at you kid.

Edit: BTW - report to moderator is for reporting spam, it's ok, no worries, now you know .... heh.