Howdy yall, I just got rid of XP for several different reasons. I installed RH 9 and I just can't seem to get started. I can't figure out how to install any software at all. Rpm's or tarball. Keep in mind that i have no knowledge of linux at all. Do I enter rpms through the terminal or do I use something else? Unfortunately I have found no one in my area that knows anything about linux. I tried finding books at the local library, but all they have pertains to windows. Are there any step by step how to's" available on the net? I can't afford to buy anything at the moment so it has to be free. I would really like to figure this system out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

I like to use the terminal for as much as I can.

If you get an rpm file. you can install it with....

rpm -Uvh /path/to/file/package.rpm


If it is a tar ball. 99% of the time there is a readme in there that tells you how to install it, it varies between packages though.

Stick with it

Craig

hi Tex5150 here are a few links that have been invaluable to me as i also am new and learning.

http://www.google.com/linux
http://www.linux.org/
http://linux.ctyme.com/
http://sourceforge.net/
http://www.onlamp.com/linux/cmd/
(i found this thru a forum search here at linux general)
http://www.linuxquestions.org/
(and of course you already found this forum so you're on you're way.)

were you able to get all of you're hardware (network card sound card video...etc) up and running ok or is your main concern just installing software?

The only hardware that I was't able to instal was my linksys wireless card. I have 2 computers networked (mine is a laptop). Linksys tech support says linux is not supported. but I have the tar ball driver that is suppsed to work for it. I have not had any luck so far with it. Still can get my software to install yet.

I think I will have to build a kernel for my linksys driver. For now i think I will just stick with trying to figure out rpms and tar ball for now.

what's the model of the linksys card. what are you're network specs (hardware, os's, config, ..etc) harware and configuration specs? you will find that posting more spec's will get you more hits. i'm pretty green myself, but i like to try and help if i can.

I'm running Red Hat 9.
Laptop with:
Pent4 3.06
1024mb RAM
60gig HD
ATI Radeon Mobility M9
SIS 10/100 ethernet
Linksys WPC-11 version 3.0

........ And for Tarballs.......

Typical files end in *.tar.gz or *.tgz

su to root user in a command line - then

tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz

or

tar -zxvf filename.tgz

Remember they get extracted to the current working directory.

This will untar and unzip the file and create a sub directory with the name of the filename - cd into there and then look for the readme or install file that will have installation instructions, often consisting of:

./configure
make
make install

Ok,stupid question, but I have to ask it. What do you mean by su to root?

Nice that you asked that...
Your best friend the manpage:
man man

so in your case:
man su
and you'll find out what it does

also if you have trouble try these other man commands:
apropos (same as man -k)
whatis [string]
command --help

su root or su

ok, I tried to install a wine rpm. Now what does this mean?
[jackass@localhost jackass]$ rpm -Uvh /home/jackass/RPMfiles/wine-20030508-1rh9winehq.i386.rpm
error: cannot get exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
[jackass@localhost jackass]$

you need to login as root before the rpm command.

sorry, read this later and didn't intend to be so short. idid a search on

error: cannot get exclusive lock

found that it was related to root and looked at your post again and saw

[jackass@localhost jackass]

should be

[root@localhost jackass]