I installed GAIM 0.75 through an RPM. All it said was 'install' successful without giving me a choice of where to install it. I didn't know where it was. A quick search told me it was in usr/bin. I made a desktop shortcut to the file 'gaim' (which was all by itself with no other files strangely?) in that directory.

When I did that the shortcut on my desktop was a 'gear'. Going to 'Edit File Type' of that shortcut, and clicking the icon picture and changing it to GAIM seemed to have no effect. Any suggestions?

when you install new programs onto your computer through RMP bits and pieces are storred all over your computer, not in one spot like windows. You can change the default installation directory by using some of the rpm switches

type

man rpm

/usr/bin is where only binaries are storred (bin short for binaries which are much like exe files in windows), so all files in this directory will be executable files.

other directories like this one are /bin, /sbin, /usr/local/bin etc etc etc

typing

echo $PATH

should show you them all.

what you were doing when changing the icon looks right, make sure you pressed ok and not cancell.

-JAX