sir
i m totally new to linux and i m using backtrack 3. Atheros ar9285
wifi adapter is not recognised by backtrack 3.so i downloaded driver
compat-wireless-3.0-rc1-1 from web. but i dont know how to install. so please guide me step by step.

Hello and Welcome to LinuxQuestions,

You do know that there's a version 5 out of BackTrack, right? If not, I advice you to download it and try it (live session maybe) to see if it supports your hardware out of the box. I'm not familiar with that card but you could see if there's a driver/firmware available in the repositories with:
In using the package manager to install something you have better control over updates/upgrades and so on.

What extension does the file you downloaded? Is it a source package, .deb, ...?

Kind regards,

Eric

The installation of a driver with apt-get on Backtrack versions earlier than 4 will not work, before version 4 Backtrack was not Debian/Ubuntu based.
I second the recommendation to give Backtrack 5 a try.

ok sir i will install backtrack 5 later.i am using backtrack 3 through usb flash drive. but now tell me how to install a program or software in backtrack 3. what is make and what is build? i m totally new to linux. so please tell me step by step..

Normally in Linux you use the package-manager to install software. this obviously won't work on Backtrack 3, since it is not supported anymore.
So if you want to install software on that system you have to compile it from source code (a.k.a bulding the software). Many programs use a tool called make for building to make that easier.
If you want to learn more about that google for compiling software on Linux, we will not give you step by step explanations for things easily available on the net.

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