Newbie question-installing software
 

OK, I just installed Linux Fedora Core 4 as a dual boot system (with Win XP) and it's running great! No Problems. I installed Linux to have something to play with while I'm deployed to Iraq. I'm trying to install software that I've downloaded and have hit a wall. I didn't think I'd have problems with something as (I thought) simple as installing software. I've looked through the resources on the internet, but the ./configure, make, make install hasn't worked for me. ./configure gives me a bash: ./configure: file or directory not found. I'm assuming I am suppose to be running this in the terminal as the root user. I had no problem extracting from the .tar.gz files. I go into the root directory, type su to change to root, type ./configure (get error), make, make install.....no luck. I've tried reading through the install and readme files, but they were not much help. If anyone is willing to walk me through it, I'd appreciate it. One of the programs I'm trying to install is firefox (latest update 1.0.7). If I can see how to do one, I should be able to figure the rest out. Any help is appreciated.

Charles

Charles, first be careful over there... I'm 18 year veteran myself. I'll be back over that way again next year myself.

Second, is there a particular reason why you're starting out with compiling your own software? I'd recommend that you learn the ins and outs of RPMs first. If you're going to be rolling your own software though, you need to be running ./configure in the directory where you untarred the tarball. When you untar something it's going to create a directory with the contents of the tarball. CD into that directory and run ./configure. Then ./make and ./make install. the ./ doesn't refer to the the root (/) directory of your file system.

That's not always true, especially with firefox. It's true in most cases if you download a source package. But firefox (as well as some other packages) is a binary package I think.
You should untar the archive you downloaded and change to the directory. Do a "ls" and look what you see. Usually there are files like "README" and "INSTALL" that give you the information you need to install the package. Of course you can look also at the website you got the file from, often there are install instructions.
While you can often do a ./configure && make && make install there are sometimes other steps to take, for example when installing perl modules etc.

On the other hand, for the beginning you maybe should take iggep's advice and use precompiled RPMs, in case you want to do it the easy way. To have something to play, compiling from source is a good exercise :)

And I hope your time in Iraq will go over soon, so that you can use your new Linux skills again at home :D

It seems like most everything i look to download is a tarball, i.e. ends in tar.gz. Forgive me for asking, what is RPM and how do you use those. can you give me a file location (I don't care what, any free download will work), and the steps to take to get it working. I primarily use the gnome desktop and all of my files are downloaded there. I then open up the tar.gz and drag it to the desktop which creates an unpacked folder. Is there anything wrong with this, or is there a better way to do it. Just trying to learn and get up and running!!!!

RPM stands for Redhat Package Manager. RPM is the preferred, and most utilized means for installing software on Redhat (and other distros) these days. If you don't know what RPM is, you might want to take a couple hours, download the available FC4 documentation, and read it first. I'm positive this question, and many others you will soon have, would be answered if you were to do this.

Package management services are able to solve a lot of the headaches of home-brewed compiling (dependency hell), by automatically downloading and installing dependent packages, along with the package(s) you're trying to install. Back when I used Redhat (7.x, 8.x, 9.x) I installed apt-get and used it to manage my RPM installs. Under Mandriva, which I've been using since those days, I use URPMI, which also does all that. I've no idea what Fedora uses for package management, but I suspect there is something very similiar lurking there somewhere. Reading that documentation will tell you what it is, as well as how to configure it.

But if you want to download and install RPMs, all you need to do is check out one of the large RPM stores available on the Internet. Check out http://rpmfind.net/ and http://freshmeat.net/ for starters. http://Sourceforge.com is another site you will undoubtedly come to frequent often.

HTH