i am trying to download and install the MIT-scheme package from mit's servers, and ive never installed programs on linux before. I am running debian lenny, and when I search for answers online, every page s giving instructions on how to use APT on the downloaded file. Very nice and easy to follow command line instructions - only problem is I do not know where the tar.gz file that I supposedly downloaded is located.

I looked in my home folder, my root folder, the sources.list file in the apt folder, and all folders as user as well as root. Even searched the file system from GNOME's file browser.

When i click the download link in epiphany web browser, it opens up a smaller window showing the download progress of the tar.gz file, but when its complete - i dont know where to "cd" to when im in the terminal so i can use the APT tools.

Is there a way to go about this?
Am I doing something wrong?
Maybe I should be finding the address of the download link and downloading from the command line?

Any help is appreciated.

If you know the filename, even if it's only part of the filename (other than the tar.gz), try this:
In a terminal, as root, run updatedb. That will update the database of all files on the system.
Then, either as root or user, run "locate filename" (without quotes) replacing filename with the name (or partial name) of the file.
Locate will give you the location.

/usr/share/app-install/desktop/mit-scheme.desktop
/usr/share/app-install/icons/_usr_share_pixmaps_mit-scheme_lambda2.png

those are the results that i got

Okay - that little window that was opened when I downloaded the file - was a compressed folder -I just needed to select "extract files" and they were extracted to my hoe directory.

Then I just ran "apt-cache search mit"
from the command line and it found the mit-scheme package
which I then installed using "apt-get install mit-scheme"

(This was while I was in the home directory)

So hopefully the installed program works. . .

update:

program works. . . (yay!)

Off-topic: Debian Lenny is unsupported since 6th of February. I strongly recommend to upgrade to Squeeze.