I just installed Mandrake 10.0 yesterday, and I'm a complete newb to linux. Here's my questions:

1)can someone explain to me in detail how this package management works please? I understand that I can install things using an rpm file, but most of them fail for some reason. I guess I just want an overall understanding of what is happening here.

2)I heard somewhere that most of the distros come with java capability, but mandrake apparently didn't. how do I get that running? Is it on the mandrake cds, or what.

3)what is cygwin?

also, any other general linux information would be nice.

thanx

also,


What is gcc, glib, glibc, etc, and how can I get it? I don't think my install came with it because I got some errors when trying to install xmms.

What are runlevels, and how do I select them?



thanx in advance

1. I won't explain in too much detail about packages, but you can either install with the GUI by going to the menu: System->Configuration-> Packaging. Or you can try using urpmi. You will probably want to google for easy urpmi first to see how to set it up. It makes everything a lot easier. http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/

2. For Java, I think that they have some easy instructions on the Sun site that you can use. I found this page:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/install-linux.html

3. Cygwin is just a way to have a linux environment in Windows.

I hope that this this is helpful.