Ok lets answer some of your questions:
I'm gonna go in a differant order tho...
3. Are there any install packages that you just click and it self installs?
Yes, if you are looking for a certian program that will self install, look to see if it offers a rpm file. This is a package which is installed very easily. When you download a rpm file all you have to do is right-click on it and select to open it with kpackage manager. (you'll see it in the drop down menu) Then it opens kpackage mannager and gives you some information about the package, click install, then on the next screen u can change wether or not you want to update or overwrite old packages. All you have to do is click install again and your good to go. Or, from terminal it would be like: rpm -i packagename.rpm run man rpm for more options. or rpm --help
Other times if you get a compressed file like a tarball and you need to install it, you would extract all the files to a directory, (right click on the compressed file-click on "extract here"). The from a terminal you would navigate to that directory (cd directoryname) and run the following:
./configure
make
make install
If there are any errors it will tell you right in the terminal. Sometimes you will be missig libraries like speex or boost and you will just have to go to those websites and get the packages and install them the same way. Make sure u run make install as root
I hope this helps.
nomb
