hi,...i recently made the switch from windows to Linux (FC 6) and have a couple of questions in which i need help.

Firstly i have adsl internet connection and was successfully able to configure it on the root account using /sbin/adsl-setup but now i cannot activate my connection from any other account. i get the message "access denied".How can i configure my connection so that i can use it on other accounts also?

Secondly can anyone please give me step-by-step instructions on how to install applications.
i tried unpacking the .tar.bz file and running he executable file inside. that works for some applications but others such as mplayer do not have the executable files inside them. how to install such applications?

Thankyou.

You could, of course, make adsl-start suid-root but I don't know if it's sensible. Another way is to configure sudo for the people who need to be able to start/stop the connection, so that they could just
That is probably the easiest way. If I'm right you'll need to add those users into the group called sudoers and then configure your /etc/sudoers, for example by adding this kind of line:
and perhaps the same kind for /sbin/adsl-stop too, which would enable the uservardhaman to run, with sudo, the commands. Alternatively you could create a new group or use some existing one, and instead of the user, give that permission for a group and then add the desired users to that group (in this case, write the group name instead of the username in sudoers file and write a % mark in front of the group name). More information: read
In Fedora the way to go is to use yum to handle package installing and updating: to update your (complete) system, run (as root, or if you have configured sudo then with it)
to install some program called programname, run
and so on. It's really easy as far as the program you ask for is in the Fedora reposities (you can add extra reposites, use Search here in LQ to find more detailed information) and you know how the package name is exactly written (without any version numbers). If it's not in the reposities, try to locate an .rpm package from the web, like from rpm.pbone.net for example -- for Fedora Core 6 (if you have a 32-bit system, it's i386 version, if you have a 64-bit system, it's x86_64). Only if you can't find rpms (which are the easiest to install either by double-clicking on them or running rpm -i packagename.rpm), use archived files like those .tar.gz ones.

Archived files like the one you mentioned are a bit different. They can be installed any way the programmer has decided, there is no general method. It could include an install script that you would make executable and then run, it could include source code that you would configure and compile, or something else..if you find inside the archive, read these two files: README and INSTALL. They have the information you are looking for. If it's source code, one way to compile it is
but that may vary depending on the code, it might need autoconf or something else..there should be those two files, or a doc directory/files or something, where it's told so read them every time.

If you find an install script like install.sh inside, you can run it like this (it's not executable by default for security reasons, and the first command below needs to be run only once per script):
provided that you are working inside the directory where the script file is in. The same goes for .bin and .run files etc.

My ADSL uses a router/hub, so I don't think I can help with that.

Installing apps is easy. On your Applications Menu, is an item called "Add/Remove Software" if your using Gnome, or if you use KDE, it's on the K menu and may be called Package Manager. This will give you lists of applications in groups. The ones that are installed have a green tick. Find the ones you want to install, tick the box, click apply and get some coffee while it does it for you.

If you download and unpack, you may not get the files in the right folders and it most likely wont run. However if you download a package as an RPM with the extension .rpm at the end of the file name, these can be installed by right-clicking on the downloaded file, and choosing "Install" from the pop-up menu.

The reason for using packages is that they should find and install any dependencies (other software that your application needs to run properly) automatically and into the correct folders.