I have absolutely no experience with Linux until last night when I finally braved it and installed Mandrake 10.1. So far I like it but of course I'm confused and thats ok, I'm learning. The first things I wanted to do were install firefox, gaim and bring my music over from my windows partition. So I have a few questions.

1. I ran the rpm files for both firefox and gaim but yet I can't find the programs themself now. I am very unfamiliar with the file structure so i'm not sure where they went and they're not in my programs list on KDE so I'm lost. Both are installed and firefox ran the first browser it automatically opens but now I can't find the files to make a shortcut or anything like that. Gaim says its installed but I can't find it either. I attemped using Kopete but I have trouble with it and to be honest, I just didn't like the interface.

2. Is there a way I can bring my music files over from my windows partition? I've attempting mounting the partitions but it says I can only mount under the root account and then when I try to log into kde on the root account, it says I shouldn't do that so I'm really lost.

3. Last one, I would like to access the shared folders on the other two computers in my house but they're running windows. Can I do that?

Thanks in advance.

1) They're in /usr/bin
2) You have to edit the /etc/fstab file with your partition. Then you should be able to mount it. Maybe you should try with the command line btw cause it'll at least listen to you.
3) Yes with samba. I'm not sure if it's installed automatically in KDE. It was either in KDE or Gnome but I'm not sure which it was that had it automatically. You could just browse to network and then connect.

1. I ran the rpm files for both firefox and gaim but yet I can't find the programs themself now. I am very unfamiliar with the file structure so i'm not sure where they went and they're not in my programs list on KDE so I'm lost. Both are installed and firefox ran the first browser it automatically opens but now I can't find the files to make a shortcut or anything like that. Gaim says its installed but I can't find it either. I attemped using Kopete but I have trouble with it and to be honest, I just didn't like the interface.

I know that the firefox installer allows you to choose where to run it from, as for gaim try just typing

gaim

into a terminal prompt. you can type gaim& and then you can close the terminal.

but there are a couple places they could have installed, try looking in /usr/bin to start =/

2. Is there a way I can bring my music files over from my windows partition? I've attempting mounting the partitions but it says I can only mount under the root account and then when I try to log into kde on the root account, it says I shouldn't do that so I'm really lost.

You don't really need to "bring them over", as you can access them from linux. I don't have any experience with mandrake but my guess is it mounts it for you, the thing about the root is you need to set the permissions for /mnt/windows and /dev/hda1 (most likely your windows...) so that all users can access it. so something along the lines of

chmod -r 775 /mnt/windows

3. Last one, I would like to access the shared folders on the other two computers in my house but they're running windows. Can I do that?

You sure can. I'm relatively sure that mandrake sets this up for you, just try browsing around the file thing to start with...