[kjo1]

I installed Fedora 9 from a live CD, and no text editor was installed. I've been wandering around the web in a daze for the last day and a half, trying to figure out how to get emacs. The GNU site has an ftp download list, but I don't know how to do that, yet. I have a Fedora 8 DVD that has it, but, again, my ignorance prevents me from installing from that disk. From the reading I've done, I gather that yum is a universal find-and-install utility, but my knowledge is so limited that man and info pages are too complex (too many unexplained brackets, parentheses, et al.)
Will someone direct me to a reference site that deals at "supernoob" level? Help with this specific problem would be appreciated, but what I really need, for the long run, is one or two sites that will get me started with a decent foundation, based on the assumption that I know *nothing* Thanks.

[bigtomrodney]

Yum is a package management tool, of which there are many in the Linux world. It doesn't so much magically find the packages rather it has a catalogue of available software. This available software can be on the internet, on a network share or as I suspect in your case can include the installation discs.

If you want to install it simply open a terminal and switch to root, followed by your yum command;

su -
#you will enter your root password here when prompted, it will not show up on screen
yum install emacs

This will retrieve the package either from the internet or prompt you to insert one of your installation discs. Most people use the command line simply for the speed and direct approach but you can also use a graphical tool such as yumex. I'm afraid I don't run Fedora myself but maybe one of the other users can recommend this or give further guidance on it.

[kjo1]

Whoops. Just found something on linux.org that may fix me. Sorry to bother...

[kjo1]

Whoa! That was quick. Thanks, BTR. I'll try it.

[bigtomrodney]

Not to worry, hope my post helps anyway.

[kjo1]

It did help, that quickly. I have a feeling that I'll be spending some time in the linux.org tutorials... Thanks, tons, BTR.