Hey, im a total n00b to linux, i jes randomly decided i was sick of windows and installed red hat 7.3 today(what can i say, im spontanious)


anyways, on to the question, i downloaded a new gaim installer after desovering the only way to talk on msn that came with linux was an old version of gaim that reallly sucked...


its a tar.gz file(the new gaim i downloaded) and i have no idea what to do with it, i looked a bit on google and found that i can do stuff to it with gzip and now its a 4x the size plain old tar file after a bit of fiddleing etc... but i dont think its any closer to being installed... if anyone knows of a guide for a total linux n00b on how to install stuff (paticularly gaim) on linux or knows how i would go about installing gaim could you plz let me know.


thanks for even taking the time to read this oh and dont forget to tell me how to install gaim.. i might even thank you again

Welcome to LQ.

Jeremy has written a general guide to get you started on this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ticle&artid=15

Basicly you need to uncompress the file eg:
tar -xzf gaim-xxxxx.tar.gz

Then cd into the newly create gaim directory:
cd gaim-xxxx

In there should be a file called README or INSTALL that gives more detailed instructions.

If you run into problems then just post again.

you do a:

tar xvzf blah.tar.gz

where blah is the filename

then it should be extracted into directory "blah"
cd in there then you usually do:
./configure
make
make install

but make sure you read the documentation

heh 2 replies in 1/2 an hour, thats what i call service.. thanks guys il try what youve suggested

Actully 10 mins 21 seconds. But hey, Who's counting

well, gaim isnt the only one for msn out there.
i kinda prefer 'amsn', which is exactly like msn - most ppl wont make out a diff untill they see the penguin instead of the butterfly.

gaim is ok if u want to have all the messengers using one program. since i only use msn and yahoo - i sometimes prefer having both separate.
plus, amsn has a nifty 'login as invisible' , which, i find very, very useful

apparently i have "no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH"

...

would someone be so kind as to point me in the general direction of an acceptable C compiler?

thanks

you don't have gcc installed?

what is gcc?

the gnu c compiler. u will need it for pretty much everything.
i think u might already have it, as it is normally setup during first install.

in a terminal , type :
gc
just the above 2 letters, and hit tab, untill u see a completion.
if it shows gcc, then ur fine - else u will have to install it.

arg. it diddnt show it... guess that means more installing before i get to the.. installing(of gaim that is)

i guess its just on the cd's somewhere or something is it?

it should be. i havent used 7.3, only 8.
8 had this menu option under 'system tools", or was it "system settings".
was called "packages". it was basically the same interface to select packages during firs-install.

i cant believe gcc wasnt installed, unless u told it not to. but again, i havent used 7.3