downloading & Installing Linux programs
 

Yes, I am a newbie to Linux and I am proud of it. I am almost at the point of ditching the other guy's OS . I do have one question. Since I am a newbie to this, please don't laugh too hard at my question. Well, here it goes.

I am using Suse Linux 9.2 on my Compaq laptop. I am familiar with installing software from the installation disks through Yast. Herein is my problem. There are some programs that i would like to install ( e.g Mplayer ) onto my laptop from the internet. I went to the website and noticed that there are several files to download. Where do I download them to and how do I install them ? I know with Win you download the file and click on the exe file to install. I have read through a couple of Linux books, including the Suse Manual, but it's not quite clear to me. Is the process the same or do I have to jump through several hoops and sell my firstborn to accomplish a download and installation ?

Would someone be kind enough to help this newbie through the process ?

Thanks

To install from source....

Download the *.tar.gz of what you want to install. To keep this simple, I'll explain it exactly the way I do it using KDE on Slackware. Extract the file by right clicking>Actions>Extract Here. This (usually) creates a new folder in the current directory. Go in that folder. Right click in a white area>Actions>Open Terminal Here.

NOTE: These actions may be located in a different place, but they will still be in the right click menu.

At the terminal (command line), generally you can type "./configure", "make", "make install". There is pretty much a README or INSTALL text file included. There are sometimes different methods of installing and they should be listed in one (or both) of these files.

Also, the installation process can be shortenned by typing "./configure && make && make install" instead of doing so individually. This depends on the package though.

This is basically a generic walkthrough though. In about 99% of the cases, instructions on actually installing the program you just downloaded is in the README or INSTALL file once you extract

See also...
Jeremy's how-to: Compiling Programs from Source

OK you have 2 or 3 different approaches here

a) download the source and create your program with the *NIX trinity (./configure; make; make install)
b) download a binary rpm and install it using yast

b) is clearly the easier approach, as you download it and if I remember correctly ind KDE just double click it and SuSe should asked you if you want to install it on which it starts yast

a) takes some "fiddling" sometimes.
In your best case senario it should work like this
if it doesn't got so nicely if you need to hand some parameters to configure
taking apache as example what modules you want and such things
often you can tell configure where you want to have the program to using the prefix cmd

advisable would be to read
I) the output of ./configure --help
II) the files README and INSTALL that come with the src


I hope it helps you

downloading & installing Linux programs
 

Thanks to everyone for the info and the help. It is appreciated very much.