I am installing RealPlayer and it wants me to specify a folder to install it to. should I use my own within my home folder or use a directory where the other programs are installed that came with fedora, if so which folder are the programs in?

Hi,

You can use your home directory if you wish, but what I've done in the past is put it in something like /opt/RealPlayer. Then, remember to create a symbolic link in the /usr/bin directory to the RealPlay executable (I have a feeling the installer will do this for you) - you'll need to run the installer as root.

And that should be it!

self contained, non standard apps like realplayer tend to go into /opt. this acts much more liek "program files" on windows, i.e. one directory per app. then you would have a symlink from /opt/Realplayer10/bin/realplayer to /usr/bin/realplayer for easy access.

Technically you can put it in any directory you want. Costum is to put apps you add on into /usr/local or /opt. You could also put it in /usr but traditional that is for apps that the distro supplies. If you want to keep it really separate from everything else put it in /opt/realplayer and then set the bin and lib paths accordingly. Or just put it in /usr/local... most common place for add on apps. Use whatever system you want and will make it easier for you basically.

What do you mean by this "set the bin and lib paths accordingly"? Do I create those folders or are they files?

Okay lets say you decide to put realplayer into /opt/realplay. Where I would put it also. Now, you will have /opt/realplayer/bin and /opt/realplay/lib directories. If it's only one bin and you are not going to link anything else to the realplay libs, i.e. other apps, then you could do as was suggested... "ln -s /opt/realplayer/bin/realplayer_app_name /usr/bin/. Me I set my path and libs accordingly.

Let's say you put a biggy in the /opt like kde or gnome. Creating a thousand sym links is not optimal. So I edit my bin PATH in my bash profile. In slack I've created a script /etc/profile.d/extra.sh to set these kinds of things and do other customizations. Like different colors for root and user prompts, CFLAGS, aliases, manpages etc. The /etc/profile will look into /etc/profile.d directory and run any executable script.

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/realplayer/bin

and then I add the lib directory to the /etc/ld.so.conf file. Then run ldconfig.

I've probaly confused you. So for realplayer just do what the other people recommended and create the sym link.

Extra thought. Why do you wan to use realplay? Xine or Mplayer are really good. You can add codecs for realplayer, quicktime, windows media player, etc and have it play any format.

I'm only asking because realplayer has a reputation for installing spyware and what not and is a shady company.