Hi I'm new to linux and after about two straight days of fooling around, trying to install packages etc. I've got a few questions that I'd like to get answers for.

1. What is good practice in installing stuff? is there a particular area where packages should be installed in? and what about when upgrading, where do you install then?

2. I've noticed that many times after installing a package (with no errors and just like the README told me to) that the linux system still doesn't recognize it. Like, for example I installed the latest version of glib and then went on to install the latest version of gtk (same version number as glib) and I got an error stating that the version of glib I JUST installed was not installed. Similar thing have happened with many other packages.

3. This is related to the above: I know that Windows has a registry where it keeps all of it's system settings and such but what about Linux? I mean where does it store the information on which version of a certain program/package, whatever is currently installed?

These questions should be very easy to answer, at least I think they SHOULD be. Please respond because I would like to learn more about linux and how it works, otherwise I'll be blindly doing things with no idea of what is going on.

I'm only a few months in, so still a newbie, too. I can't tell from your post if you're familiar with RPM and URPMI. Since you're on Mandrake, urpmi is the easy way to install software. If you can't find what you want through that (or the newest version), installing a package (rpm) yourself is the next easiest. Then there is compiling it yourself.

For info on how to set up your urpmi sources:
http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/

Some tutorials that have helped me with urpmi and rpm:
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin...UrpmiResources (especially the link to Walter Chang)

Maybe that will be enough to get you rolling in the right direction.

Well, thanks for responding toes, I am familiar with rpm but not the other one you mentioned. While this will definitely help me out in installing, I also would LIKE to learn how to install a package, program, etc. from source. I'm sure there are many linux pros in the forums so I'd like to know how to do this.

I say this because, just like you stated those installers are not available for everything. Thanks for your help nontheless, I'll check out urmpi.

As for any other persion who feels they can answer my questions please respond, I really would like to learn more. Thanks

Ah! I forgot to include anything for installing from source. Sorry about that. Here's one more link. I use this one often, too. It has worked in most cases for me.

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/softinstall.html

Thanks for that source I already know how to go through installation i.e.

./configure
make
make install

But this page you linked me to has some other stuff I didn't know. Thanks a lot for your help toes, most people don't bother to help, I really appreciate your help

Now if only I could find out if you need to install certain packages in a certain location (like say a system package like "aspell", "bzip2", "glib", "gtk" etc.).

I'm just still confused as to how I installed certain packages (some named above) without a single error, yet my system didn't recognize them as installed. If someone could explain why this is possible (or impossible ) to me, I would greatly appreciate it.