An Intro to Second Life for...

How to get started in SL

There are 2 types of account in SL, a free account (First Basic) and a paid account (Premium). The most significant difference between the two is that Premium allows you to own land, First Basic does not.

Registration is required to enter SL. The process is quite simple but your name should be considered carefully. While you can change your appearance as much as you wish in-world, you cannot change your name. Take care choosing a name as you can do it only once. The last name you select from a list that periodically changes, the first can be whatever you wish as long as the combination has not been used already. Your name will be viewed in combination with your avatar by others.

Installing the SL Viewer

Minimum System Requirements to run the SL viewer are:

• Internet Connection: Cable or DSL


• Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better


• Memory: 256MB or better


• Linux Operating System: A reasonably modern 32-bit Linux environment is required. If you are running a 64-bit Linux distribution, you may need a set of 32-bit compatibility libraries.

Video/Graphics Card:

• nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better


• OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better

NOTE Second Life absolutely requires you to have recent, correctly configured OpenGL 3D drivers for your hardware. You'll most likely find that currently the proprietary Nvidia and ATI drivers will perform better than the Open ones.

The SL Viewer will be much happier if you have:

• Internet Connection: 500 kbps or better


• Processor: 1.6GHz Pentium 4 or Athlon 2000+ or better


• Memory: 512MB or better

Video/Graphics Card:

• nVidia GeForce FX 5600, GeForce 6600, or better


• OR ATI Radeon 9600, X600, or better

Once the SL Viewer is installed you can always check your frame rate and quite a lot of related info with CTRL + SHIFT + 1.

You can download the pre-compiled for i686 SL viewer for Linux. If you prefer to compile your own, the source code and instructions are available.

The SL viewer and Grid change quite frequently and once every few weeks you'll need to manually update the Viewer to the current version. The plus side is that the newer versions are often quicker and less buggy. The current version of the SL viewer at the time of writing is 1.15.0.2 and was released today.

If choose the pre-compiled tarball, you could just unpack it somewhere in your home directory and run it from there. If you'ld like install it "where the apps live" so that other users of the workstation can run it try this from the directory you downloaded it into;

tar -jxvf SecondLife_i686_1_15_0_2.tar.bz2 -C /tmp

sudo mv /tmp/SecondLife_i686_1_15_0_2 /usr/share/games/SecondLife

sudo chown -R root:root /usr/share/games/SecondLife

The SL viewer is started at the command line by default, but you could easily add it to your GUI if you wished. All your preferences and settings are saved in .secondlife directory in your home directory. A useful benefit of running it from a shell is to see the copious debug info it provides to get an idea if a difficulty is due to your host or the grid.

Entering SL for the first time

After you have the SL Viewer installed and running you're ready to authenticate and will be delivered fresh and new born to Orientation Island. Allocate a few hours for this stage as you won't want to rush it.

Inventory management is an important skill to have from day one. This SL Knowledge Base Tutorial video on this topic provides good advice and suggestions.

Part of the Inventory for all users is the 'Library'. It's not deletable and is filled with a wealth of all kinds of goodies including a Tux penguin t-shirt. See they are Linux friendly!

As with most people, one of the first things you'll want to do is change your avatar's appearance. This is a good time to get a feel for your hardware's performance and to get used to the SL Viewer's UI. There will certainly be other new avatars there too, and you can chat with them if you wish.

Any IRC using Linux geek would be familiar with open and private (IM) chat. This is used in SL along with a collection of /commands that can be modified to your tastes. The difference is that open chat is limited to avatars in your geographic vicinity. IM will work to the person or group you select regardless of where they are.

Note cards will be presented to you to guide you from one stage of the tutorial to the next, and although you may feel as though some of it may be beneath you I encourage you to follow them. Too many people enter SL proper without necessary basic skills and this can be avoided. Pay especial attention to the sections on camera and view controls. You'll depend on these skills quickly becoming second nature.

Once you're done with Orientation Island

To find other Linux Australia members in SL, join the in-world group. CTRL + F will bring up search. Select the 'groups' tab and search for 'Linux Australia'. Click the 'Join (L$0)' button and you're now part of the group. Welcome You may also consider joining the 'Linux Client Users' and 'Australians' groups, both are free to join and provide useful and fun information.

You can build and script from day one if you wish. There are many in-world tutorials in world to help you develop these skills.

From there, this second world is your oyster - Enjoy!