Newbie - Ubuntu Linux & Front Ends

[Roughy]

Hi all,
 
There's a very uninteresting backstory as to why I'm here, so let's say that I'm buying a new house, filling a rec room and am feeling somewhat "do it myself"-ish about some of this stuff.
 
Here's where I'm at:
 
I've installed ubuntu on a little cheap-o box that I have.  It's nice, and I like it, but it's not like I'm married to it.
I've found xmame & installed.  Unfortunately I'm a lot more of a Windows guy, so imagine my frustration as I double-clicked the hell out of it on the desktop for several hours.
I've found and downloaded Advanced front-end.
I moved on and tried gxmame and it appears as if it SHOULD work, however, it doesn't not find my ROMs no matter how many times and ways I point it to the correct directory.  A friend is mimicing this issue in Ubuntu.
 
This is sort of where I've stopped.  Stalled, at least.  As stated, I'm a little green on the whole Linux front, so a lot of the command-line configuration stuff is quite possible for me, but I'm challenged and I'm pretty sure this process will be fairly involved for me and trouble-shooting is going to be an absolute nightmare.

Here's where I'd like to be:
 
I'd like to be somewhere that has a newbie/dummy walk-through for setting up this little system to make it the game box that I want it to be.  Then I'd like to repeat the whole thing a couple of times on other boxes.  Then someday I may try my hand at Daphne (not that I think it's any more difficult, but one thing at a time).
 
That said, I'm hoping someone may be able to offer a little hand-holding and/or general direction pointing to help me find my way--or a right way so that I can start enjoying some point-and-click Game ROM action and then dump the whole thing in a cab and feel impressed with myself.
 
Does anyone have any tolerance/patience left to help a fella out?

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Russ

[elvis]

Firstly, read through the entire documentation:
http://gxmame.sourceforge.net/docs.php

Yes it's long, but Linux is one of those things that makes you learn before you fiddle.  It's the thinking man's OS.

In particular the "audit" and "directory" parts dealing with ROM locations.

Secondly, post your gxmame config file so we can have a look at it and point you in the right direction.

[NeeBick]

I had the same exact problem. Its the version of gxmame, its incompatible with the version xmame offered from ubuntu's repositories (which is kinda old).

Here is a link to the ubuntu support forum thread that helped me out:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=105509&postcount=5

Now do you know how to compile in linux is the question?

p.s. I'd suggest installing xfce4. Its like gnome but much lighter and better for older machines.  Also Frontends are only area of linux emulation that are really lacking. I have tried both Game Launcher and Lemon Launcher but received various during compiling.

[Roughy]

Thanks for that info; since I spent tons of time in the docs before, the RTFM thingy really wasn't much use, but that link made a huge difference and I'm up and running.

Thanks very much!

...now if I could just find some AutoCAD drawings of cabinet plans... (but that's a different thread)

[lostboy4480]

http://www.jakobud.com/

Has a selection of planes

tnx