Yes this is asked all the time, you can try the search function above "Has this been asked before?"
That said, I'll get you started with some info on the basics of installing software in linux.
There are two basic ways of installing: from source, or with a binary.
Source:
You download a tar.gz or tar.bz2 most times. These are "tarred" and compressed archives.
For tar s you'd use
tar -xzvf <filename.tar.gz> to decompress and expand the archive.
tar -xjvf <filename.tar.bz2> for bz2s
From there, you CD to the directory that just got created, normally the name of the package and version.
You'll usually find documentation in the form of README and INSTALL within the source package there.
All the details of installation are given right there.
Most times, though, simply doing these commands will install the program:
Code:
./configure
make
make install
It may be necessary to become root before make install will go through, as it places files into /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin which are not writable by default to normal users.
Binaries:
You'll be using RPM and its packages. That's the red hat package manager. Learning RPM can be a task in itself, and you'll be experiencing what's called rpm or dependency hell.
In linux, most programs rely on standard (sometimes not so standard...) libraries which are shared among applications with common needs -- things that define what buttons look like, how to perform specific tasks, etc. This decreases the amount of code that needs to be distributed with packages themselves and helps to promote standards in programming, as well as decreasing total disk space used.
RPM checks to see if all of these libraries, or *dependencies*, required by the program you want to use are installed before it'll let you continue with the installation.
You're likely to see
RPM: Error -- package xyz is needed by Zinf-2.2.5.rpm
or some such.
Simply means that you need package xyz to be installed before Zinf will install and work.
Now, going and getting all these libraries yourself can be frustrating, time consuming, and sometimes impossible in cases where you have circular dependencies -- package A requires package B which requires package C which requires package A and so on.
Typical installation with rpm follows this sort of process
1: download .rpm file
2: rpm -i file.rpm
There are many options to rpm, some for upgrading, some for installing, some for removing, etc etc. There's also the --force command which will force a package to install even with unment dependencies. That's usually the way out of circular dependencies.
I suggest you read on and search more about how to use rpm before you start pulling your hair out
There's also a nifty tool called apt for RPM which downloads and installs a package along with all of its dependencies. I'd highly recommend that for you.
To find rpms needed by dependencies, or just programs you want:
www.rpmfind.net
fresrpms.net
Good luck and good learning toya
--Shade
