Unable to run Flight Gear after installing it

[Ari Torhamo]

Hello!

I had already stopped searching for a distro that would include the three main items on my wishlist: Debian-based, Gnome-desktop and up-to-date packages. Do I have to tell that I was glad to find Ubuntu. I know almost nothing about Linux internals, so I'm happy to find that mostly Ubuntu just works. 

I'm planning to recommend Ubuntu to some people near me, who now use Windows and show some intrest in trying Linux. I hope you developers go on with your efforts to make Ubuntu as easy as possible to use even for novice users. 

I actually think that in the future large part of the Linux users in a way always will stay "novices" to Linux, except just to those fairly few programs they use atop of it. But I don't think that a novice user really minds, if there also are advanced settings and configration options for advanced users to fiddle with, as long as the novice user is not exposed to them or forced to do decisions that he or she doesn't understand.

Finally to my question, which is about getting Flight Gear to run. I installed flightgear 0.9.4-1 with Synaptic (which is always use when I install or upgrade software). After the installation, which seemd to go without problems, I couldn't find anything to start Flight Gear with. I couldn't find a relevant item in the panel menu, there wasn't any icons anywere. I did "updatedb" (one of the few CLI-commands i know :) and then searched with the term "flight". Following items were found:

flightgear.postinst
flightgear.postrm
flihtgear.md5sums
flightgear_0.9.4-1_i386.deb
flightgear (folder)
FlightGear-FAQ.html
AptNavFAQ.FlightGear.html
FlightGear (folder)
X15_flight.ac
FlightGear-FAQ.html
flightgear (textfile)

There doesn't seem to be anything one can execute here and those FAQ's didn't help either. I actually tried to run some of the files, but they didn't bring Flight Gear alive. Has something possibly gone wrong with the installation? Does it look like there is something missing from the list above. There was only one Flight Gear -package available in the package listing in Synaptic (I have universe enabled). 

I don't even know, if programs, when installed with Synaptic (Apt), are always ready to launch, or do you sometimes have to continue the installation process by doing something. Were the files maybe just extracted and I now should somehow do the actual installation? 

If anyone has any ideas about a possible solution, I would be greatfull to hear them.

Regards,
Ari Torhamo


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