so im a newbie. and there are those .gz.tar files.
i type tar -xvzf blablabla.gz.tar and it get uncompressed
then i go in the directory. often, there are "blabla-installer" files. so i type ./blabla-installer and it installs.
but more often, there are none of them. just a bunch of files.
so i think i have to type ./configure. and that's what i do
a lot of things happen in the console and thats long and i think that since it looks complicated, it must be good.
then i think i have to type something like "make" or "make file" or "make install". but it usually just doesnt work. and then i get depressed.
i can recall that one day, it worked. but i couldnt find the installed file. i was worried.

well anyway, what id like is a complete walkthrough for installing .tar files, whatever they might be.
and just imagine (it wont be hard i guess) that im a mentally retarded 3 years old child and that i am drunk and dyslexic. so then im sure ill understand.

thanks

It's not going to happen. Not all packages install the same way. In the packages that you have untared have INSTALL and README files that explain to you how to install that program. Sometimes they'll have install pages on their website to help you out. The more you do it, the better you'll get at it. And if you're using FC3, you can download the RPM's instead of compiling applications from source.

The ".gz" extension signifies it is compressed and ".tar" means that it is a group of files.

tar -xvzf filename tells the program to extract the contents (x) visually (v) from a single (f) ".bz" file (z)

Unless you specify a directory to extract to, it will extrat to the immediate directory. cd into that directory and read the "INSTALL" file or equivalent. The chain of commands for 90% of programs is:

./configure (configures the install for your system)
make (compiles the sources)
make install (places in the files in the appropriate directories)

I think you mean z = .gz juanbobo. If you want to decompress a .tar.bz2 file, you use j instead of z.

And the "v" = "verbose" = "tell the user everything I'm doing".