iu am new to linux and need some help as to how i can install drivers programs, files i understand that some may need to be unzipped but where do i place files what are a good list of commands to use i am very good at tyoping the stuff. i have fedora core set up now, any help with this or anything in linux is greatley appreciated

Oh god, I am (unfortunately) using FC1 (Fedora Core 1) right now, and I am not having a good experience. For the fact is, I don't have broadband to help me download discs or do network installs to try better distros (distributions). If I were you, I would try out either Mandrake Linux or SuSE Linux. Those are two very good ease-of-use distros. As far as drivers go, the drivers are built into the kernel, and if you're talking about video card drivers, I don't know what card you have so I can't help you there. And for programs, since FC uses the RPM packaging system, all you have to do is download the RPM binary file for the software you want to install, so if you want to install Mozilla, a web browser, you would go to their site and retrieve the latest stable package that ends with the .rpm extension. If there are no pre-packaged binaries available, you will have to download the source, which often comes in the .tar.gz extension, and you must be able to extract it and compile it. Here is a good link for how to compile source programs.

Linux isn't like windows when it comes to installing drivers. Not that it shouldn't be because I think it should be. End users buying new hardware should be able to install their new video card or their new sound card or network card without having to know about kernel source, kernel modules, make, configure, etc. It just shouldn't be that way but it is.

Considering what I am interpreting from what you have written you are incredibly new to linux and you have some limited experiences with computers/operating systems. That makes assisting you doubly hard.

Drivers, as far as I know, are called Kernel modules in linux. The modules must be either compiled by you or provided by the developer in a package that can be installed for your specific distro. Even then, there may be more qualifiers for the kernel module such as the installer (if the developer created one) may be specific to your kernel (kernel 2.4 and 2.6 are quite a bit different and alot of times you can't get a specific pre-compiled kernel module for that hardware device specifically from your vendor). That's when you have to ensure you have your kernel source loaded (for your specific kernel) and then either use their installer to compile it or compile it yourself.

Sound confusing? To a seasoned linux person it isn't. These can be downloaded and installed in a matter of minutes. To a newer (or even just someone considering themselves to be a desktop user) it can be a travesty because these poor souls have no idea of the mess they have involved themselves in.

Alot of this is due to the fact that there are so many kernels, so many distros, so few hardware vendors writing their own driver, and a sheer utter lack of a universal distro installer such as you find in the macintosh and windows worlds.

But hey, it makes service fees for those writing the OS and support programs (sorry, was being sarcastic).

Anyway, even if you were to go to suse or mandrake you'd have the same problems. Even though these vendors (Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, etc) provide some default drivers, depending on what devices you are using, you may be getting a very much trimmed down implementation of that driver. For instance, the nVidia drivers provided by redhat are so generic that they have little to no 3d acceleration support (which means no games for you till you get it resolved). Luckily nVidia driver installs are somewhat easy on FC1. The ATI radeon 9600 (and I would assume most of their cards) video driver install under any distro is a nightmare (and the support of it is horrendous on the web boards). Whether it is Fedora, suse, mandrake, gentoo, debian, slackware or whatever, you are going to have problems with drivers and the best thing to do is to stop, take a deep breath, and take it one step at a time. Educate yourself little by little, search the linuxquestions.org before asking (they hate it if you haven't done your work yourself) and then when you exhaust those then post it with enough detail so that they know what system you are using, what driver you are trying to install, what distro and kernel you are using, etc).

Good post. I am having trouble with my soundcard and would also like to get a media player going. A lot of posts suggest recompiling the kernel. Your post was the clearest one I've seen on this subject, but still scares me as I am sort of new and don't have hours to spend on it every day (maybe a couple hours on the weekends). I like tinkering, but I also like positive results, none of which I've had this weekend. I wonder if just reinstalling and choosing the extra options (for media and sound) isn't for me. I have the 3 CD distro for Mandrake 9.2. I've also seen the suggestion to upgrade my version of Mandrake. Is that the same thing as recompiling the kernel? Would this be a worthwhile experience for someone of my limited free(huh!) time?

When I started with linux it took me much longer then a week to get even nvidia installed. Out of all the attempts at installing it, it installed, but it lacked an option in the XF86Config file so it appeared to lock my screen at a black screen and there was nothing I could do to except turn off the computer and swap video cards to recover). I didn't know about these options and was lucky to find someone to reference it. I added the line and bingo, the nvidia driver worked. It took me at least 2 weeks of trying various cards, various ways of doing it, figuring out how to start linux without x (but providing a quick single command option to start X) so I could test it. I searched the boards up and down, seach google.

The problem was that no one was complete, lots of running at the problem from the wrong direction (thus wasting my and other people's time). The lack of completeness was the worst. Too many vague references to some file or some procedure without explanation about those.

Did that edumacate me? Very little. I would have been better served by having complete info up front so I could spend my time learning learning something a bit more useful and constructive to the linux effort in order to encourage others to use linux.

I love linux. I have 8 machines running now. Each distro, though, seems to be different enough that you seem like you are learning all over again (well, not all over but enough) for each one. What's ridiculous about it is that they are all the same thing once you get the OS installed. It isn't the OS install that is the major problem today with linux. It seems to be the installation of programs once Linux is installed. The lack of a universal distro (kernel independent) applications installer is killing the hopes of linux. When that appears on the scene and is viable it will forever change the world of computing propelling linux (and in a few years) putting it in a position ahead of Windows.

Mandrake's installer is different then Fedora Core (Red Hat). Fedora Core permits you to, say, take a Fedora Core 1 installation and upgrade it to Fedora Core 2. Is that the same as upgrading? Yes. Is recompiling your kernel with a more current release the same as upgrading? Yes, and no.

To give some background and to help simplify upgrading your distro I provide some comments below on how to make it more simple.

There's a program out there called APT (apt). It was developed under the Debian distro, but works in other distros (they are all the same linux afterall). This tool fixes some of the problems that most people encounter with .rpm installers (which seem to be the most common type of package used to install programs and upgrades in linux).

RPM is pathetic (IMHO). It is one of the worst attempts at an installer I've seen, akin to an amateur programmer back in the early days of DOS. But that's what alot of distro's use and so alot of programs are packaged in it. The problems with it are that it won't attempt to resolve dependencies (dependencies are like .dll files that are missing or require specific versions). Here's what I mean (at least mostly).

When you get an .rpm file you normally are asked to just double click to do the install (in your GUI--in the terminal there are switches you pass to the executable to tell it how to operate--but alas, most ppl shouldn't be required to learn those switches or interpret the arcane descriptions associated with those switches). The RPM package then does some pre-processing and either installs or it stops, telling you that there are problems with files that are missing that this program depends on. Hence, you find yourself in dependency hell.

What's worse, is that when you go out to resolve the dependencies you find that those dependencies may have dependencies. (Kills the hopes of linux for any type of success on the desktop.) Seasoned Linux users may disagree because they know how to solve these problems. But the average desktop user will nose-dive back to Windows instead of trying to work out the issues.

If you are able to get the RPM to proceed without errors you will not be told where the files went, which files were installed, nor will you be given an option to say where you want the files to go. And finally the RPM package installer will virtually never tell you it succeeded.

Then along comes apt (APT). Apt is a program that will assist you with your RPM installs, and will help you get your packages installed by finding and resolving those dependencies over the internet. The problem obviously is that it requires a good high speed connection to the internet to do so.

Another problem is that it is another one of those amateurish character-based (terminal) applications and lacks the sophistication of the world wide common GUI interface, and has a cryptic arcane series of switches (that are most often described in almost unintelligible (at least to the average desktop user) descriptions).

Aside from that it works. It can virtually eliminate the dependency hell you end up in when trying to install an .rpm by simply clicking on it.

One remaining MAJOR problem is that it isn't easy to get it running on all distro's. I have not successfully managed to get it to run on my mandrake machine. Searching the web for support on using apt on mandrake results in vague incomplete support which helps very little. But, as far as I am concerned, since Mandrake is technically the same OS as Fedora Core (Red Hat), Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, etc., it should run--but alas, lots of problems associated with getting it installed.

How does this apply to your question? Well, the answer to that begs another question. What do you want to upgrade on your distro? Do you want to upgrade some of your programs, do you want to install a new kernel, and/or update kernel modules?

If you want to install a new kernel, and you try to do it manually, you are opening a can of worms. So, the simple solution is to get some program, such as APT, to do that install of that kernel for you. There are other concerns though. Will your current kernel modules continue to work with the new kernel?

If you want to install applications (or upgrade them) then APT can handle most of that for you without problems. To simplify it more, once you get apt up and running, you can download and install Synaptic. That will provide you a graphical front end that works well with apt.

But again, keep in mind that APT requires access to the internet with a high speed connection (cable modem, etc). And it requires that you seek out and update some text files with references to web sites operating as a repository that holds the contents of RPM files created by others (mostly volunteers). This isn't as hard as it may sound.

So, it is takes a few steps:

Get apt installed.

Get synaptic installed.

Find repositories on the web that store pre-packaged rpms for your specific distro.

Update the sources list file in your /etc/apt directory to refer to those repositories.

Then launch synaptic to perform those upgrades.

Synaptic is a nice program and it can also be used to install pre-built kernel modules for your distro for the kernel you are using. So, in a way it answers all those questions. It can update your kernel modules, your kernel, and your applications. And best of all, it doesn't require you compile anything.

The simple answer to your question is, as best I can interpret it, yes, recompiling the kernel with a newer version is, in a way, updating your distro.

Another way is to just download the next update (Mandrake 10) and make CDs out of the ISO files, and then boot with them and perform an install (hopefully Mandrake 10 has an "upgrade" options). When it completes it should have installed the most current kernel placed on those ISO CDs.

I just wanted to chime in here...generally in Mandrake (I run Mandrake 10) you can use the RPMdrake to get many of the rpms you want. RPMDrake also deals with the dependancies and asks you if you want them installed.
In the menus (on 10 anyway) its under the system menu and packaging, install software. It asks for your root password and then lets you install whatever you want.
The other thing to learn about would be URPMI. It's also a package getter. Here's a link.
URPMI
Hope that helps a little.

Although I don't have problems with competiting package installers, having so many can create divergence in this area when, indeed, we want convergence. In other words we see a seperation of distros using their own tool instead of all distros using one common tool to simply linux for the average user.

Yes, there should be competition amongst the distros to provide the users with the best solution but alas, again the world of linux is 10 years old now and that should have been resolved years and years ago.