Erm, sorry, dumb question, but how do I install programs? Like, how would I take the source, and then, um, use the program? Better yet, how would I install something WITHOUGHT using RPM? Thanks!

*****Colonel Panic*****

Once you have decided on what program you want to install, you will have to decompress it.

tar xvzf FILENAME.tar.gz
--or--
bunzip2 FILENAME.tar.bz2 | tar xv

Once you have decompressed the program 'cd' into the directory and look for a read me file. This file almost always has the installation instructions in it.

9 times out of 10 you install something like this....

./configure
make
make install

Here's some even dumber ones.

Where do you put the file file before you decompress it?

And where does it go after you decompress it?

And once you find it, how do you start it? There's no *.exe as in Dos.

And what does stable and unstable mean. Stable sounds as if it should be better but who can say in a world gone MAD?

Where do you put it (the source)? Wherever you want. I do mine in /usr/src/packages/SOURCES and then unpack it.

Where does it go? If you unzip (tar -xvzf foobar.tar.gz) it will (usually) make a folder in the current directory. So if your're in /usr/src/packages/SOURCES and you unpack it it will be in /usr/src/packages/SOURCES/foobar

How do you start it? Read the README and INSTALL files. If you're looking for an .EXE then stick to .rpm installs. Seriously. But building from source can be fun (really!) and you'll learn a lot about your system in a hurry.

Stable and unstable are relative terms. For a game it's not that big of a deal, but for security or filesystem stuff you would only want to use stable stuff on production systems and keep the unstable for your test boxes. That way you get to see what works in the new releases, how to manage it, what breaks, and (hopefully) how to fix it.