Linux Noob questions

linuxlewis

I'm a total noob to Linux, I installed Mint 10 Gnome on my laptop yesterday, have done pretty well setting it up so far thanks to the awesome Linux community posting just about everything one could ever need to know on the web, but I've got a few queries I can't find answers to that I'm hoping someone can offer me some assistance with.

1. I've tried to update firefox manually - downloading it and setting it up in the terminal (mint updater didn't offer any updates for it). As far as I could tell everything worked ok with the install, but when I open it from the menu its showing v3.6.17 rather than the v4.0.1 I downloaded. I'm fairly sure that my distro came with an earlier version so it seems to be newer now, just not the latest, which has got me a little confused as to what's happened.

2. I've tried without success to play my favourite online time waster cosmic supremacy.. as far as I can tell there's not great support for the game on the linux side of things sadly (to be fair it was made by 1 guy as a hobby project), but I was hoping I could get to run well enough to continue playing and put up with the glitches. I've installed the game client, the ms fonts it needs and the latest Direct-X with wine but when I try to enter a game the client starts to open, then gives me an error msg saying that I either need to update to the latest version of Direct-X or that my graphics card doesn't support Direct-X. Since I have the latest version and my graphics card does (well did in windows) support it, could this be something to do with me not setting up DX correctly? Any idea how to check if I have set it up correctly?

3. Mint comes with a firewall, I've enabled it, and the default settings were allow outgoing and deny incoming, is that all the configuring I need to do? Also noticed I can deny or reject.. what's the difference there then?!

4. Lets face it the best part of a new OS is playing with the settings to make it look cool (if you've not guessed by now I'm a big kid) changing the appearance and editing theme's in the control centre doesn't offer as many options as I'd like and most the theme's I've come across online aren't what I'm looking for. Is there an app that gives the ability to create your own? I've also found some purdy boot splash and log on backgrounds but saw someone saying you couldn't change them in Mint 10, is this true?

Any advice on any of these points would be greatly appreciated.

linuxlewis

Managed to upgrade to Firefox 4 so you can ignore question 1 and I've discovered Emerald so most of question 4 is covered as well, I'd still be glad of some advice on q 2 & 3 tho

marc

2- I'm no wine expert although I suggest you to check on their webpage
3- Don't know about the Linux Mint firewall but I understand it's talking about DROP vs REJECT. In the REJECT directive the firewall gives an answer to the client saying that the package has been rejected. In the DROP, it simply drops the package.

There's many discussions about DROP vs REJECT on internet. There's no perfect answer to it though. IMHO opinion I usually set it to DROP (although for somethings, like private network, I usually set it to REJECT).

Regards

saqman2060

You have asked this question in another thread. Please do not post this question on another thread. This will be the main one.

mfillpot

I cannot help you with #2 because I no not use wine and have no experience installing directX in wine.

3. the default settings you stated do not seem sufficient unless you permit the established and related packets inbound prior to denying inbound packets. There is much more that you can do to reinforce the firewall including setting up specialized services and setting up rules to handle various DOS attacks. The difference between deny and reject is that deny silently disregards packets and reject will announce to the source that the packets are denied. I personally prefer deny for all but icmp packets so that non-approved hosts are not aware of what services are in use.