Hey guys,
First time linux user here. I just installed Fedora Core 2 sucessfully in the last 2 days (without damaging my WinXP data! ). Before the installation, I read some reviews about FC2 and all of them mentioned that I should scrap 'up2date' and go with 'yum'. Well, I did and its working perfectly. But I have one small question:

When I ran the command 'yum install bluefish' (a small editing package), yum took care of the entire install. The problem is, I don't know where it installed to! Is there a bluefish.exe somewhere now? (I tried searching for it, but found nothing).

Not only this, but I would also like to find out about the entire directory structure of Fedora Core 2. Is there a relative "Program Files" folder (like in XP) where all the programs install to? I see things like /bin and /etc but I have no idea what these mean. Also, is the directory structure standard on all distros or do some vary?

Thanks for any help you guys can give me!

EDIT:
One more small question I thought I'd stick in here: Is there a way to open a terminal under a regular account with ROOT accessability (so I don't have to keep logging on and off to run yum)?

1. Linux does not use .exe files. In fact a binary file (exe in windows) can have any name.
So the program to run bluefish may be called bluefish or bfish.sh or any other name. The extension does not matter!

Yum install's programs using RPMs (Redhat package manager). This is just a logical database that allows you to uninstall programs, install programs, update programs etc.

You can get a GUI that will interface with RPMs such as synaptic or something but the command utility works nicely as well.

Open a terminal and type

rpm -qa

This may take a while and will display every single rpm package on your system. In there somewhere will be the Bluefish program you recently installed.

rpm
( Is the rpm manager program.)

To install rpms and upgrade you use

rpm -Uvh thePackageName.rpm

-qa

the "q" stand for Query and the "a" stands for ALL. So by running the command rpm -qa you are telling the RPM program to query all packages in its database, hence all programs on your computer.

to uninstall

rpm -e thePackageName (note there is no .rpm at the end)

It can be difficult to find an rpm sometimes so running the command

rpm -qa | grep blue

The | (pipe) symbol is used to send all data from something (in this case rpm -qa) to another program instead of the default (the default is to print to the screen).

"grep" is a find utility that will find all lines that have "blue" in them and hence will only display these on the screen. So by running the above command you will probably only get bluefish-1.4.3 or something similar displayed on the screen.

the final command you need to know is the -l switch (anything with a "-" in front of it is called a switch), is used to display all files associated with the rpm package.

So

rpm -ql bluefish-1.2.4

will show all files associated with bluefish-1.2.4

You will notice that they seem to be installed all over the system and they are. Linux does not install everything in one place like windows.

anything in the bin or sbin directories will be programs you can run so these are all like .exe files in windows. When you do the above command look foa a file that is installed in /bin or /sbin or /usr/sbin or /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin etc.

That will be the command you have to type to get bluefish working.



2. Yes the directory structure is confusing but is similar for all distributions. It is set out to be logical and easily extensible for reason explained by someone with more linux knowledge than me. And no there is no "Programs Files" like in windows.


3. To get root access from a terminal in a user accound type

su

then the root password

Wow, thanks for all the tips jax8! I found where Bluefish was installed by using the "rpm -qa | grep blue" command (its in /usr/bin). But when I found it, the option to make a shortcut (or "link" i think Linux called it) was greyed out and I had to log into ROOT to do it. Not really sure why this is necessary.... Is there any way that I can do any of the following?

1.) Change my accessability preferences? (Log into root and change what my regular account can and cannot do.)

2.) Get root privileges temporarily without logging out of my account.

3.) If not, should I just always use root? I know it said not to use root so I don't screw anything up but this is getting incredibly annoying.

Thanks for helping me out.

Bump

1. There are a number of ways you can give your user account better privileges. The first is to add your user to a member of a group. Each file and directory in your system belongs to a group. All users that belong to that gropu will have access to the file and directory.

The other way is to change the owner of the file. All files have an owner. Bluefish probable is owned by the root account if you cant access it.

The other option is to change the owner, user, and group permissions associated with a file or directory.

Type this in a terminal.

ls -l

The -l switch tells the ls (list files and directories) command to show permissions, files size, owner group etc etc, of files in the current directory.

You will get something like this.



For the first file above the permission are drwxr-xr-x the user is "jack" and the group is "root" and the file name is "Applications"

permission work like this

the first letter in this case "d" represents the sort of file. "d" is a directory so the file "Applications" is a directory. The remaining six represent the permissions for the OWNER, GROUP. OTHER. They represent READ (r), WRITE (w), and EXECUTE (x).

These permission are changed by using the chmod command.

type man chmod for more information about this command but basically if you wanted to give everyone full access to Applications you would type thie following in the ROOT account.

chmod -R 777 /usr/bin/Applications

(the 777 is octal so dont worry about this too much. There is anothe way to assign command which you will find in the chmod manpage)


This tells the system to change the permissions of the directory Application and all files and directories below it (the -R option does this) to be given the following permissions, rwxrwxrwx. So in other words the user, group and other will all gain full privlidges to the Applications. This is of course dangerous so changing the use will suffice. And of couse there are ways to only give the "OTHER" read access and the group only "EXECUTE" access etc.

To change owner use

chown -R jack Applications

This will change the owner to jack for the directory application and all directories and files below it (remember the -R option tells it to be recursive and apply the changes to everything below it).

To chnage bluefish to be accessible for the user (you) use the following command. (LOGIN AS ROOT TO DO THIS)

chown YOUR_USER_NAME /usr/bin/Bluefish

this is assuming that the command to run bluefish is Bluefish.

2. To get root privileges use the su command which i explained above. Open a terminal and type

su

then type the password.

You will then be logged in as root and have access to the whole system.

3. Don't always use root. I know this is annoying. But when you work out whoe to change the permissions of files and things I think you will have no problem.

You can change permissions graphically as well if this is easier by going into gnome or konqueror and right clicking on a file and going to the permissions section. It is good however to get used to using the terminal

Check out sudo to use root temporarily. And again, no, you do not want to run as root except when you need to be. The separation between user and root privleges is a major reason (besides better code) that the security of linux is better then MS products.

Do read a newbie linux guide and try things out. Here is one: http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/ which I still use. Experiment, don't worry too much about breaking things, because then you get to learn how to fix them.