Help getting started with OpenGL

Okay, we need some more information if we are to help you properly.

1) What do you mean GLUT doesn't work? Does it crash? Doesn't link? What?

2) What compiler are you using? Visual Studio?

You need to copy the glut32.dll into C:\windows\system, you need to put the headers and .lib file in the correct folders for the compiler to find. You then need to tell the compiler to use the lib and then you #include the headers in the source.

1) Well, a few months ago I was using the NeHe tutorials, and for some weird reason, after Tutorial 5, it had a lot of linker errors. I could still compile the previous ones just fine, and I'm quite sure I had everything linked properly, with the .dll in the right place.

That was a few months ago, and as of opening up a preprogrammed source example of GLUT and compiling it, it seems it's compiling fine - but then again, I did say that Tutorials 1-5 were compiling fine, but 6 came up with a lot of linker errors...

EDIT: Scratch that, the preprogrammed thing was a FreeGLUT thing, and I have no idea how similar or different that is from GLUT (other than it being free, of course). And I didn't tell you what OS I'm using: Windows.

2) I'm using Dev-C++.

I don't really know what is happening with the linking problem but i do know that if a tutorial dosen't explain exactly what something does as soon as you see it then chances are that you don't have the knowledge yet to understand it.

For example: A tutorial uses cin and cout and then goes on to explain Stream I/O. This would be very confusing to the reader to say the least.

The point of tutorials is they explain what they can to you and finally when you have the knowledge they explain concepts in more detail. My advice is to just stick with it.