I've installed Linux a bunch of times and a bunch of versions. Never before have I been able to download anything that I downloaded. Today I downloaded a .rpm file and it acted like a regular installer. The problem is the .tar.gz or whatever that I've downloaded. Where in the heck do I type that long string that it tells me to type? It starts with cp $HOME/...... something or other. Where do I put that? Thanks alot in advance!!!

Being new to Linux as well. When I d/l files that were tar.gz I have found the command:

tar xvzf (filename)

to work very nicely. Run this where ever the is, and it should install in the proper directory.

There is probably other info, but this has so far worked for me.

Erik

tar xvfz filename.tar.gz (or .tgz) won't install the software yet; what it'll do is just decompress the archive, depending on a developer's state of mood during packaging it might decompress the file into its own directory, if so descend into this directory
cd filename (usually) and then read if any README and INSTALL files for further intstructions, most probable it'll require steps like
make
make install
but as I said before it depends.
And I am confused, and I believe anyone on this forum is confused as well. Did you download an rpm or tar.gz? They're different types of files, where is rpm is precompiled binaries unless it is .src.rpm, and tar.gz is archived binaries, which can be precompiled or the actual source that must be compiled and installed.