Problem's installing program's
 

I have Mandrake 8.1 & I am having problems installing everything.
I am trying RPM's & trying to untar them & compile from source but all are failing.
I think the reason is cos I installed the development program's when I was installing Mandrake.
Can someone tell me if this could be the problem
Example, I try install a program & when I use RPM the rpm program goes looking for say /usr/bin/progname but instead finds /usr/bin/progname-devel.1.*.* & the installation fail's.
Am I way off here or what?????
Thank's in advance

I am confused about what you are doing, if you have an rpm package
become root it's better done in console: open Xterm or like type su
enter password for root
cd into/derictory/where/the/package/is
rpm -ihv package.rpm
that's all, if it fails because of dependencies download all deps and install everything in the manner mentioned above

Sorry, I'll explain a little better.
I was trying to install Mondo rescue & mindi.
I have to download & configure Mindi first before I can install mondo.
I first download Mindi in rpm format & try & install it that way but it need's afio, I then download afio in rpm format & try install that & again try rpm on Mindi but it still says it cant find afio but it is there.
I then uninstall afio & download it in tar.gz format & try to compile it from source but I get an error when I try 'make install' that says I need ld.so or something.
I then go off & get ld.so & install that, afio still cant see ld.so.
I am doing all this as root by the way & on teh command line.
This is a fresh install of Mandrake 8.1 & I have compiled from source & used RPM's loads of times in the past without problem's & that is why I think there could be something wrong rather than just failed dependencies.
Any ideas ????