redhat 8.0 install; so many problem...

[Fraughton]

I recently decided to try out linux. With the help of my roommate I installed redhat 7.3. The one major problem I had was configuring my printer. Come to find out I needed a newer version of ghostscript which comes with redhat 8.0. So, I downloaded 8.0 and installed it. Now I cant play music, even though the soundcard test works great and I cant get the printer to work still. I also am having trouble finding programs that I know were chosen during the install, such as xine and licq. I actually cannot find any media player at the moment.

For the printer I was instructed to download the hpijs drivers as well as foomatic. I followed all the install procedures and there were no errors, but I still cant find my printer in the list. It's the hp deskjet 3820 by the way. If anyone has any ideas I'm happy to hear them.

As for the sound, I'm stumped. The drivers seem to work by the test in the configuration, but when I try to play an audio cd there is no sound. I cant even add an mp3 to the playlist of xmms for some reason.

perhaps there's another distribution that would suite me better.

My computer is an athlon xp 1700+, 256 ddr, geforce4 mx, sb live 5.1.

please help

[MaXimum SMOKE]

RH8 has a known issue with mp3s. see
http://www.xmms.org/
for the work a rounds. I don't know about the cd issue... I am assuming you already checked all the settings on the 'audio mixer'. If you did an upgrade from 7.3 to 8.0 instead of a clean install, I'd try the clean install.... I can't shed much light on the printer issue, except to say I've had my best luck with CUPS as a printing system http://www.cups.org/

[Fraughton]

Yeah, I played with all the mixer settings, I think the cd issue may be that I dont have an audio cable from my drive to my soundcard because it didnt come with one.

I did a clean install originally because of past experience upgrading windows.

I find it strange that mp3's worked great in 7.3, but not at all in 8.0. Thanks for the link, I'll check that out.

The printer issue bugs me because I had found a site that explains step by step what to do, but it didnt work.

Do other distributions offer better support?

[Statica]

Yes the audio cd issue is because of the cable .. what printing system are u using for your linux installation? Did you install cups?

[Fraughton]

I'm not sure about the printing system. I was following the instructions on http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/install.php to get the drivers for my printer. I did this, but I still cant find my printer in the list when I run the printer config tool. I also tried to download the foomatic database which was under fixes for 7.3, but I thought maybe it was still a problem in mine, but no go there either.
what's the standard procedure for getting a printer set up. There's a good chance Im doing it wrong, since my experience with linux began two days ago.

[Fraughton]

OK, I got the printer working...I found a foomatic database at www.linuxprinting.org. I found my printer in the list and ran the config program. It printed the test page anyway. And I am using CUPS.

Thanks for the links MaXimum SMOKE, the next step is to install the new XMMS plugin.

I still cant find the any media player, or LICQ, though I know that I selected them to be installed.

[Fraughton]

well, I found licq. I found Xine media player too, but I cant get it to run for some reason. Things are starting to come together.