Hi

Had mandrake 10 about a week and loving it.

Installed allsorts of software, some of which appear in the kde start menu but others dont.

The ones I can remember the name of I start in a console

But how do I discover what software i have installed if it doesn't appear in the start menu and i can't remember its name to type it in the console?

As root run:

# rpm -qa

That will list every rpm package that you installed. Not all will be apps; some will be libraries. If you know part of the name of the app, you can pipe the above command through grep. For example, if you want all rpms with "gcc" in their name you would run:

# rpm -qa | grep gcc

For a graphical tool run as root:

# mcc

and enter your root password when prompted. Then go to Software>Remove and expand the menu to see all the packages installed and a description fo what each package does.

Thanks

How do I do The pipe symbol again?

"|"(bar) is the pipe symbol and is located on the same key as "\", i.e backslash.

Thanks that was easy

I have found the name for the software I installed, how do I open it?

Just typing the name doesnt work.

find the executable it will probably be in a bin folder somewhere. Type the full path to that. Are you sure its installed, cuz most programs installed are put in places that are in ur path, meaning that you dont have to go look for it, you simply type the command.

You can do whereis yourapphere to check where the executable is. To see in what directories it resides, try: locate yourapphere

Thats a nice tip to know but It doesnt find the app.

When I use # rpm -qa | grep nameofapp it appears but I don't know how to start it or find where it is.

As root run:

# rpm -ql <package name>

That will list all files installed by the package and the full path to their location. Here's an example I did with the pciutils package:

The name(s) of the executable(s) that pciutils installs is not evident from the package name but rpm -ql reveals that "/usr/bin/lspci", among others, is installed by this package. "Lspci" is a command that lists everything on the pci bus but you would never guess the name of that command from the package name. Using rpm -ql usually reveals the name and location of the executable associated with the package.