noob ubuntu won't run

I have unpacked it but when I click on second-life bin nothing happens. I was wondering if this problem is being caused by my distro or somthing else?

You probably need the nvidia GLX extensions installed which I believe is nicely packaged as part of the 5.10 (Breezy Badger) release of Ubuntu. You may also have to make an addition to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

There should be a "glxinfo" command that will say "no glx" if you do not have it installed and will give you screenfuls of output if you do.

Good luck.

Navigating to the .sh in the terminal and starting it from the command line will show you the error messages when it doesn't start.

Open a terminal. navigate to your second life folder and type ./secondlife

shep what happened? did it work from terminal?
what's the error?

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A

I had to install a version of the xserver which supported OpenGL for my card, I suspect you will have to do the same. For most new users in linux the default software rendering is enough and is compatable with the majority of cards out there. However once you get to knowing your way around the OS and/or start wanting to do things like play Second Life (which requires OpenGL), you need to replace the software renderer with one specific for your brand. Ubuntu has upgrade pages on their wiki for breezy which should work for either nVidia or ATI cards.