Gaim installation directory
 

I just got Gaim installed but since it didn't add a shortcut to the system menu thing in Kubuntu, I need to know the installation directory so I can actually run the program. Also, does anyone know to create a shortcut to launch Gaim onClick?

You should be able to run gaim by typing "gaim" at the terminal. To create a shortcut on your desktop, usually it is just a matter to right-click and choose "create launcher" and fill in the form. Type "gaim" under the program field.

With that in mind, you don't really need to know where gaim is installed, but executables usually are locate under "/usr/bin" or "/usr/local/bin". This vary a lot though. You can try to find where gaim is by typing: "whereis gaim" in a terminal window.

Note: Linux is case-sensitive, so Gaim is different from GAIM and gaim". The correct is gaim.

Gaim installation directory
 

You should find it in your menu under "internet". If it is there, you can right-click it and copy a shortcut to your desktop.

If you don't see gaim in your menu, use your file manager to go to usr/bin and look in there for the gaim executable (looks like a blue gear-wheel). Again, right-click and copy to your desktop.

You can then right-click on the executable icon and then properties or the "wrench" icon. In there, click the executable icon which will bring up a choice of icons. Choose "applications" and find the gaim icon in there, select it, click apply, ok and close - and you're done!

This assumes that gaim is correctly installed of course :)

I was unable to launch gaim in terminal. It says "bash: gaim: command not found"

When I looked in /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin gaim was not in either of those directories. I even did whereis gaim but it just found two folders that did not have any executables in them.

I'm guessing that I installed it correctly. I extracted the tarball and did ./configure, sudo make, sudo make install and I thought that was all I had to do?

That depends. Did it return any error message? Usually, you can see error messages when you run the "./configure" script.

May I ask you one thing though: Why are you trying to install gaim from source? You have a fairly recent distribution (Kubuntu 6.10) with a great package manager (apt-get) and if you use that to install gaim, chances are: you are going to get the latest version anyway (or very close to it) without much effort. Open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install gaim

nothing more, nothing less. The very best way to install programs is to stick with the package manager your distro provides. It makes it easier to install, remove and update, besides keeping your db clean and conflict free.

Unless you do, have a reason to install gaim from source that I'm missing here...

I didn't get any errors when I ran ./configure. I'm installing from source because I want to use gaim beta 6 but the latest I can get from apt-get is beta 3.1

Compiling isn't the easiest thing in the world, but once you get the hang of it, its not bad. It sounds like its not installed correctly. Whats your linux experience? If its limited, it might be wise to just stick with whats in the repos. Most of that software should work fairly well.

IGF

Yeah, it is fairly limited. I made a complete switch about two weeks ago and have used Windows only once since then. I'm really trying to learn this stuff since I don't see Windows in my future ever again. Any ideas why the standard install method wouldn't work? Especially since its such a commonly used program?

I just found a .deb package and got it installed. :D