How new program Install works in Linux?
 

Most of the Windows user know that when we install new program, it install itself in directory "program file" it also copies some necessary files and information to windows system (32) directory and windows registry.

What about the Linux? When I install some new program either from script or RPM, where files get installed. How can I know that which file is part of which installation? How can I remove unwanted files, broken links and not working programs without hurting others (files/program)? How can I know which file depend on which? Is there anything like Linux file cleaner (alternative of regclean of Windows)?
Is there any graphical user interface (like Windows Add/Remove program) in Linux?
Don’t talk about Red Hat Package Manager (RHPM)? Because it only shows add/remove for companies’ software. I installed RealPlayer, MPlayer, etc on Red Hat 9 Linux and these software are now not shown in RHPM.

:newbie:

if you use package management programs (like rpm or pkgtool) you can use the uninstall options ...

if you wanna compile from source , you can delete the directories/files where the program resides

basically most programs are installed in your $PATH

You can use synaptic to get a GUI for RPM/APT - currently the area of software installation on Linux is still being worked on heavily, and a lot of stuff you are used to from Windows is lacking.

Having said that, when you use RPMs you can get file lists, see dependencies, get file information etc from the command line

If you have a RedHat system it's worth knowing about rpms for this issue. A great place to start for information about that is "man rpm". But the most important commands for your questions are...

rpm -qi <package> // Tells you what the package is for.
rpm -ql <package> // Tells you what files are in the package
rpm -qf <file> // Tells you what package a file belongs to
rpm -qR <package> // Tells you what other packages this package need.

As for scripts (I guess you mean tarballs, .tgz, tar.gz), they're generally installed to somewhere like /usr/local/bin. You can check this by unpacking them and looking.

gunzip <file> // Uncompresses the tarball
tar -tvf <file> // Lists the files in the tarball

Usually the files will be installation scripts rather than the program itself and almost always, there's a file called something like README. If you look at that file, it will tell you more about where the program (and all it's associated files) will be installed. It will also tell you what you might have to do to configure it, and how to uninstall it.

As for clearing up files and links, I'd be careful about that. You can probably delete anything under /usr/local, or /opt without doing much damage, but I'd leave anything under any of the other top level directories alone, unless you know what it is and what it's for.

Bearing the above in mind, to get rid of realplayer and mplayer, just find them and delete them.

locate -u
locate -i realplayer

It won't hurt to look for readme files first

locate -i realplay | grep -i readme


John

Good advice jkobrien. Thanks