How exactly do I go about installing files? I'm still a little confused about all this installing stuff. For example wine.....I downloaded wine, unpacked it, then typed, ./tools/wineinstall as the readme told me to do. It then installed (i think), but now I have no clue where it went to. Does it go to some file kind of like the Program Files in Windows? if so what's the name of this file? Please help!!

Also could I have just typed ./config, then make, then make install?

Most programs are installed to their own directory, and the executable file for the program is stored in /usr/bin. For wine, simply type "wine" at the command line, and that will run the program.

Use the ./tools/wineinstall utility. It's there for a reason.

Wine defaults to installing to /usr/local/. Wine installs all over that directory so pinpointing files is kinda tricky without find, locate, or whereis.

Test your install with notepad which should live in fake_windows/windows/. The fake_windows top directory should default to /home/you/c/. This also assume you did not use your existing windows installation to run wine from as the README strongly recommends.

Good Luck

Yes, you could have installed it by just typing ./configure, make, make install, but, the wine readme specifically tells you to use the ./tools/wineinstall utility for a reason. In the past, I tried installing wine by using the ./configure make make install method, and had problems... compile would fail, etc. But when I ran the ./tools/wineinstall script, it installed flawlessly and worked like a charm. But that's only for wine, most other programs don't have install scripts like that.

To know how to install a program, you should always view the "readme" or "install" txt files that will be in the source directory after you extract the source tar files. 95% of the time, all the information you need to know to install the program will be included in those txt files.

If all of this is too hard for you, you might want to consider getting something easier like mandrake suse or redhat, as they have package managers and precompiled binary packages that are much easier to install.