new to redhat/fedora. rpm question
 

im new to fc2/redhat been using linux for a long time. No experience with rpms and such

i skipped or it doesnt install j2re in fc2 install?

tried:
up2date -i j2re
up2date -i java
up2date -i j2sdk

kept saying it couldnt find it. what was i suppost to look for / how to find out?

i went to sun site and downloaded rpm.bin file but it keeps saying the file is corrupt

found a rpm on www.rpmfind.net <is this a good site for rpms?
j2re-1.4.2-8.1.fc2.dag.i586.rpm <what is dag?

that one fro rpm find would work fine... download it.. then get into terminal and run

"rpm -Uvh j2re*.rpm"

That will install it.. or upgrade if it's already present.. though you say it is not..

on FC2 u can install synapic which is apt -update/-install for FC2...
with a GUI which acts like a big add/remove program menu
try here for it

http://tinyurl.com/5jxkk

what is the difference between apt and update and yum?

ive read about these but why the 3 programs ... are they pulling from the same database of rpms? why use apt or update or yum over the others?

they are all package managers that do things slightly differnet from each other. APT is based on Debians APT tool but changed slightly so tht it can deal with RPM's. YUM (Yellow Dog Update Manager) was developed initially for the yellow dog distro and is now the default used by Up2date (in FC3 testing anyway).

Re: new to redhat/fedora. rpm question
 

Check out http://fedoratracker.org regularly until it has indexed all rpms again.
It refers to "Dag Wieers", the name of the person from Belgium who created the packages.

dag is someone or people who creates and maintains third party rpms for redhat and fedora. I would use the java rpm from sun's java website