Hi,

I have installed Suse 10 with KDE on my laptop and I love it. It's so slick and smooth.

Because I am a complete linux newbie, I don't know anything about downloading and installing programs. I am use to windows with exe files.

I have managed to install Wine, but I don't really know how.

What I want to know, is what file do I download whne given the choice? I thought it would be cool to try the new GAIM 2 beta 3, so I went to the site (click here) and am bombarded with a stack of files that I could download.

I understand that anything with src in the name means it is the source, or contains the source. Looking at those files, I also decided that no-gtk means no GTK library right?

I have no idea what i386 or Architecture type means at all.

So, question 1, what file do I need to download out of these particular ones?

question 2, in future, what file do I download when i'm presented with a lot of files (for another program)



On another note, I want to install Firefox 1.5. I currently have 1.0.8. I went to the firefox website and downloaded a file (probably wasn't the right one) but have not been able to do anything with it, even after I unzipped it (un tarred, however you say it :P)

So how do I update?

You should be able to remove the old firefox packages with YaST, which I believe is SUSE's package manager (I've never run SUSE myself). I'd recommend you get RPM files for the new Firefox and gaim, either through a package repository that YaST can connect to or from where you found the packages originally. Read 'man yast' for more details on how to use it.

Common misconception. Unlike in Windows where if you want something, you go to it's site, download and install it, with linux that would be a last resort-style measure. First stop, check your package manager, it makes installing new programs insanely easy and chances are it'll add stuff to your menus and do other "normal" stuff that the RPM from the programs site may not.

The problem with this lies in when distrobutions don't have up to date package repositories and there are a couple of options here. First, switch to a distrobution that does, I can think of a couple off the top of my head but neither are super-newbie friendly, Frugalware is okay though. Another option is to go to the site and download the source and use that to build a package for your distro so then it's all controlled by the package manager. By all means you can install stuff manually but in my opinion, that should be left as a last ditch resort.

I have now updated Firefox tyvm For some reason, it wasn't working before but now it is.

GAIM also appears to be doing something now that i've installed GTK and have done a ./configure command