im a newbie help

[Jab]

ok im great with windows but i just installed mandrake 10.1 and i love it so far cept i gotta get used to everything....like exes dont exist they are rpms in linux right?? sry for stupid questions but if someone could help me out i want basic software like firefox and limewire they all have linux versions but i dont know what im doing so i could realllllly use somebodys help thanks in advance

Jab

[armen]

Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) is a basic tool to build and maintain the packages coming with the distribution. The most prominent ones are Red Hat and SuSE. Providing GNAT and GNAT
-to install stuff

[armen]

use the rpm, it should fetch the things you want. else download the src code and follow installation instractions.

if no installation instructions, then panic, and google it up

[z3nith]

I guess you can think of rpm's as like an exe file. They will both place files in the necessary places to run software. When looking for your programs search for the rpm for mandrake/redhat.

From a konsole if you type: rpmdrake
You should be looking at a software manager where you can search for needed software. Example i had an error that said i need to install tk. So i typed in tk and did a search and found the file i needed.

[cvncpu]

you would probably be best going out to get a nice book on linux, any book will do but oriely publishes some good ones that i have used myself, you can find them at your local B&N, you probably could learn all you need to know from the internet, but reading a nice book about the subject helps out ALOT!

[dylunio]

I think you would be interested in this tutorial on installing.

Since you are using Mandrake, you could use the urpmi function, I now quote from the above tutorial:

Installing software on Mandrake with urpm
urpm is a nifty was to install software on any 7.x or greater Mandrake system. Some of the advantages of Mandrake's urpm utilities are:

* It automatically solves package dependencies issues by installing or uninstalling dependent packages.

* It installs packages and dependencies directly from the internet.
* It allows globbing of package names
* It will automatically update your system.
* It will install all those "not allowed to distribute" programs that you really want to have (DVD support, MP3 enoders, etc...)

How do I install urpm?
urpm should be installed by default on any modern Mandrake distobution. If it's not, you can install it using the Mandrake Control Center (MCC).
urpm Commands
urpmi

The most commonly used command is urpmi. This command allows you to install packages from your configured sources (see below). urpmi will try to install all package dependencies. It will also take partitial names and give you a list of available packages. For exmaple, if you wanted to install one of the kdemoreartwork styles, but didn't know the exact name, you simple type

[root@cayanne ~/]#urpmi kdemoreartwork

and it should return a list of packages not already installed on your system. This also means it will install the most up to date package for your system, you don't have to know which version you're looking for. As an exmaple, you may wish to add DVD Play back support to your computer. This can be done by installing any video player, such as Xine or MPlayer, along with the package libdvdcss. Rather then having to type in urpmi libdvdcss-1.2.1-1.i386.rpm, you can simply type in

[root@cayanne ~/]#urpmi libdvdcss

urpme
The urpme command deletes, or erases, currently installed packages and all packages depandant on that it.

urpmq
The urpmq command searches for, or queries, for packages that you list.

urpmf
The urpmf command does an advanced search for a filename in all known packages. For example if we are trying to compile a program and the configure script is complaining about not finding ncurses.h, we can do a urpmf ncurses.h to find that it is part of the libncurses5-develpackage.

[root@cayanne ~/]#urpmf ncurses.h
libncurses5-devel:/usr/include/ncurses.h
libncurses5-devel:/usr/include/ncurses/ncurses.h
php-devel:/usr/src/php-devel/extensions/ncurses/php_ncurses.h

urpmi.addmedia
urpmi.addmedia does exactly that, makes an rpm reposatory available for urpm to utalize. Typically, you have your installation cd's available as a default media, these are called main. In addition, you also have three other media - updates,contrib and PLF. Updates is the updates, and contrib is user contributed rpm's and PLF is all those not available for distribution for so-called legel reasons rpm's. The sysntax for urpmi.addmedia is

urpmi.addmedia [media-name] [ftp-address with] ../base/hdlist.cz
Note that the hdlist.cz is required. For example, to add medium 'contrib', we use the following command

[root@cayanne ~/]#urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/mandrake/updates/8.2/RPMS with ../base/hdlist.cz
added medium contrib
retrieving description file of "contrib"...
...retrieving done
retrieving source hdlist (or synthesis) of "contrib"...
...retrieving done
examining whole urpmi database

urpmi.removemedia
This command removes specified media. Need I say more?

urpmi.update
The urpmi.update command goes through all of your media sources and updates your installed packages if necessary.

How do I set up urpm?
urpm can be set up using MCC, but I've personally found the instructions at the web-site http://easyurpmi.zarb.org to be a little easier. Either way, you can use the site along with MCC or the console to add media. Simple follow the step-by-step instructions, and enter the command it prints out in the grey box into any terminal window, as root of course. You can even copy and paste the command, there's no need to type it all in.

For firefox just download the firefox-installer-bin file to e.g. /opt and then go to a terminal such as console ad type

cd /opt
su
[rootpass]
./firefox-installer-bin

I hope this helps;