I Am Running Discovery 10.1 And Every Time I Download Anything I Can't Get It To Run.

That's a shame. Thank you for playing

Mandrake Discovery??
You'll need to give a little more detail if we are to help you. Are you referring to things downloaded thru the package manager or otherwise? Maybe best to give a specific example.

I downloaded real player and firefox from the internet to my home page.they won't open up i can't play vidios.
I downloaded both programs on another computer running
windows no problems.I don't know what other infomation
i could give you,could it be a security problem it's
set to standard.

OK--I infer that you did NOT use the package manager.

What browser comes with your (Mandrake?)Discovery. Have you tried to set up RealPlayer on that?
(Do we know that RealPlayer is supposed to work on Linux??)

Using the Firefox example for NOT using the package manager. You will get a download that is a .tar.gz file. Here are the steps:

type "su" to become root--enter root password at the prompt
move the file to a folder where you would like to install---e.g /opt
unpack using tar -xvf filename
this creates a folder titled "firefox"--open this folder and type ./firefox

This should do it.

If you are still fairly green and squeamish about the command-line, then stick to the package manager for a while.

As was already asked is this Mandrake Discovery? If so it's probably easier to use the package manager rather than downloading from websites. I haven't used mandriva for a while so I don't remember the details, but do some searching for how to use urpmi.

I just noticed you said you downloading them on another computer running windows. If you're trying to use an .exe that's the problem right there since those are specific for windows.