I'm still quite confused about device drivers. I unserstand that if I am trying to hook something up (such as a scanner or digital camera) and the driver for my particular model isn't listed, I need to get it somewhere online. I have been able to find drivers that I believe I need. So... my questions are 1) Once I download the driver that I need, I copy it to my desktop in zip form. I am using Windows on the computer that I am online with, so do I unzip this file using winzip? 2) Once this file is copied to my floppy, where and how do I install it in Linux?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Susan

There is a linux unzip utility. I don't see what your distro is but it should be in the install media of every one. In an rpm-based distro, rpm -q unzip will tell you if it is installed.

Linux drivers come with the kernel or as kernel modules. If you have to install a special device driver that is for linux, it will have instructions where you get it.

If you can mount your Windows partitions from linux, you could copy the zip file to your linux partition and use unzip.

There is a Newbieized Help File for installing Nvidia drivers, for instance, at LinuxNewbie.Org, a good place to start learning about lots of linux stuff.

Good luck.

First off, i would recommend downloading files for linux from within linux.

You need to look for files with the following extensions:

.tar.gz
.gz
.rpm


the tar.gz and .gz files are linux zip files.
for the .tar.gz files type man tar
and read how to untar files.

for the .gz files type man gz or gzip
(not sure which one)

the .rpm files (which stands for Redhat Package Manager)
can be done from redhat with a nice gui'd program,
just look for it in the menus.

Also be sure to always read the readme files that come with
the drivers. Hope this helps you a bit

Hi
First of all i will agree with the suggestion our other friends have given. Its quite easier to download stuff for linux directly from linux system, its time wasting to download to windows and then copy to linux.

Second read the install manual or file which comes with the drivers.

Redhat distro supports .tar.gz, .gz, .zip, .bz2 file formats. you can unzip all of this with the respective utilities :

tar and gzip : for .tar.gz, .gz
unzip for .zip
bunzip2 .bz2 file

now regarding your question, first of all you have to make sure that your kernel has support for loadable modules,

then only thing left is to compile the driver if isn't pre compiled and load it to the running kernel using

insmod drivername

regards