Ive just installed Mandrake 8.2 as of an hour ago and Im having little joy doing anything. Could someone tell me how, under KDE, you run an exe? Im such a newbie...

if your referring to a exe for windows program, you can't run a windows executable inside linux... unless you have a emulator like wine or something.

So you would need smth like WINE to run..say IRC?

no.. there are IRC programs that should come with mandrake. usually you can start the program from a menu in X or you can simply type the name of the program at a command prompt to start it.

Andaae, as a fellow Newbie, my advice to you is pretty much forget anything to do with windows when it comes to playing with Linux.

yes the fundamental concepts are the same and KDE like the windows shell does a pretty good job of hiding the grotty innards from you while you find your feet.

First off I would have a trawl through sites like this one if you have a specific questions about doing something with Linux, otherwise, pretend its your first computer and you know nothing (which in my case on linux was not far from the truth ) and have a play.

http://www.google.com/linux has been a godsend for me on my travels during the past weeks. There are bags of "introduction to linux" pages out there that will at least cover the basic concepts. And for those "stupid questions" you could lot a lot worse than ask here, this has to be the most "flame free" forum I've ever been on.

Thank you for the vote of confidence on this site. Although at times it can be irritating to see yet another post saying 'Help, I can't....' when it has already been answered many, many times, most of us will either take the time to do a minimal search and point out the relevant threads, or even go through some of the points and suggest a thread for more details. Replying with RTFM is not helpful and, I think, has been kept to a minimum on this site.

As for the IRC thing, if you go to the KDE menu (the K in the corner), go to Networking and then to Chat clients (or whatever), you should find plenty to choose from. If they're not there, run rpmdrake (or go to the Mandrake Control Center) and install some. There should be plenty already on the Mandrake install CDs.

Good luck.

On the subject of IRC (and as this thread is about a broad a subject heading as possible I figure I'm not really going off topic ), is there an IRC client for Linux that is close to Mirc for windows in terms of layout and functionality? I can just about cope with IRC now but a lot of the linux clients just seem, well, basic.

i use xchat with my rh7.2

hmmm IRC let me count the ways.

those like Mirc:
Kvirc
Xchat

those not like mirc:
bitchX and commandline Irc cliants.

I would suggest you begin to explore your new system befor trying to do any installing. 99% of those things you DL'ed for win are already installed in your basic drake install. All you have to do is find it (half the fun)

Dont get the sweats over trying to figure out EVERY THING today; just take your time and get comfy. Mandrake is much friendlier than WIndows will ever be.