hey everyone, just for general knowledge to see if i got those two commands correctly:

is .rpm file more like a regular setup file on windows? like its a set of files that is installed to run a program / function. is that correct?

thanks!

I don't know about the MS side, but the Linux description sounds about right. It's important to note that the .rpm is a pkg file, not an executable. You need a pkg mgr program to install an rpm. On current RHEL/Centos/ (5.x) its the yum cmd line tool, or see the GUI "Add/Remove SW".
For 4.x systems, the cli tool is up2date.
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-2531

Normally each program is composed by a group of files. Some are executable, some libraries, some media, and some configuration files.
.rpm is a compressed format that interacts with a package manager to install and keep track of these files on your computer, so your program can be easily uninstalled, and also to not overlap files from other packages.
Rpm also as functionality to keep track of dependencies(programs that need other programs or libraries to work), so it can be installed automatically.
The difference from windows, is that the RPM package manager is a centralized manager, with sets of rules that keeps track of all your programs on your computer. On Windows it's usual each program as it's own package manager. This can lead to problems. For example, a program can override files of other programs.
There are different package managers for different Linux flavors.
Red Hat, Fedora, Centos, Suse uses Rpm's
Ubuntu, Debian, Mint uses .deb packages.
Arch uses packman.
Gentoo uses portage.

For more information look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager

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Ok I think I got it. Thanks for the information guys,
plus I found this link which provides really detailed info:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/drafts...packaging.html

After reading those docs, I think RPM (or any Package Manager) is actually more like the "Add/Remove Program" feature in Windows.
the thing is that for most MS users, alot of the features looks like built-in to the kernel.. because thats what we are used to.

Yeah, for the most part with linux you need to change the mindset from installing a program from a file into adding a package. That's the beauty of linux: there's a central program which allows you to download literally thousands of programs, update, and uninstall them. The central management style, imho, is brilliant.

There will be the odd program that isn't in the repositories where you have to download an rpm from a website, I'm not sure how rpm works (I'm an apt/dpkg man myself) but I'm sure that you can set it up so that clicking the file installs it much like a windows setup.exe or .msi file would.

You are, or seem to be, confusing two things.

• .rpm is a file format. That means that it is the format for a file, which contains stuff, including something that can be installed, information on dependencies, etc.
• There are things called package managers. These manage packages, enabling you install and de-install packages easily. A package manager may well use algorithms to manage packages from multiple repositories, update checking, searching on various fields in the package information, resolving dependencies, etc.

There is also a command-line rpm utility (which you may or may not be thinking of) which does a lot of low-level handling of rpm packages, but which you probably never need to touch as an end user and which may or may not be hiding behind what a package manager does.

If you want something that is comparable to 'add/remove programs' you want the package manager, even though the package manager does a bunch of (essential!) stuff that Windows historically hasn't bothered doing, plus some other convenience stuff. (BTW, leaving out essential features is not a good idea, but I probably don't need to say that.)

Yea I was talking about Package Manager in general. thanks for correcting me