been going of a couple of days now

I thought the idea of a rpm was to open a rpm installer. Click install.
Then go to the bin dir, select the program, drag and create a link on the desktop.

what am I missing out,

also when I have compiled a program, how do I execute it?

I know this is pretty darn basic to you guys

please assist

many thanks

Well if you have KDE installed on your system, then you might have a program called kpackage, which is a package manager. That is the rpm installer that you are talking about. Ex. Click on rpm, this kpackage program comes up, then click on install and it installs it --> If you got all the dependencies worked out that is.

then to run a prorgram, you got to make sure that the path to that program is in included in the $PATH in /etc/profile or is in the .bashrc; otherwise to run it you got to include the path to the program. ex lets say I installed kmerlin to /usr/local/kmerlin/ then to run it I got to do:

/usr/local/kmerlin/kmerlin

To execute the program open up a console, and type in the name of the program and that should work. ex. to run mplayer type mplayer followed by some commands, for it to run.

To create a shortcut to the program on the Desktop, I am asuming you are using KDE:

Right Click on Mouse > Create New > Link To Application.

Then here goto execute, and wither use the browse to search for the program, or if you know where it is, type it in.

Hope this at least exaplins a little bit installing programs.