games wouldn't load after clicked from "start" menu?

[estesflyer]

sorry, i know it's not called the start menu, I keep forgetting. I'm a windows native, trying to upgrade to linux. After buying my own package of mandrake 8.0 powerpack edition, i installed it on my computer. It runs pretty darn fast on my 1ghz-266-FSB-256-megs-of-ram-7200-rpm-ultra-ata/100-40-gig-hardrive machine.
Sorry, i wanna brag WHILE I CAN!

Anyways, i would click on the little button to launch the menu (i'm running kde by the way...) and would go under the games section, and click on say.... tuxcart, or some other little game to blow time. To my dismay, nothing would happen. I was very dissapointed, because, who wants an OS that doesn't even load it's own programs? I had just spent out quite a bit of money, for nothing.

At the time, my moniter was TERRIBLE! I was running 800x600 resolution, with a 16 meg pci graphics card. Would that have anything to do with it? Because I recently got a 17 inch moniter, with a TNT2 32 meg agp graphics card. I haven't tried installing linux yet, because i have a us robotics 56k winmodem (pci), and still need help finding a driver to work with that.

But anyways, that is my problem... If anyone could help me out, I would really appreciate it. But please, go easy on the technical terms, as I am very immature in the linux world.

TIA, and have a nice day!

- Rusty

 

[bubak]

sux, tried any other wm than kde.know, what's wm? Why do u use linux? for playing is playground, for computing is linux. read some book firs.

 

[MrTom]

some great input from bubak there

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sometimes when mandrake installs stuff it builds the menus incorrectly. if you load the package manager and search for the games names you can find out if they are installed. the interface is pretty simple so don't be afraid to click around a bit.

other than that, mandrake may have not installed the mesa drivers (if the games are 3d). mesa is the openGL port to linux. again search to see if these are installed.