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Originally Posted by drmind
Hi, I'm a experienced windows user and just got a hp2133 mini note and thought why not? and go it with SLED10 so far I'm enjoying the ride but im a total linux noob. I was trying to install limewire on it and on the download menu for their site they have versions for windows, mac, linux (ubuntu and debian) and another one for linux and other systems so I got that one and came on a zip file but I cant install it , when I open the zip file I cant see any "exe file" I know installing stuff is harder on linux maybe less intuitive for windows guy like me I dont know. Any tips?
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- Unlearn your Windows habits
- Get software from repositories when available/practicable
- EXE files are irrelevant for native Linus usage
- Installing and uninstalling stuff on Linux is often easier, its just not like windows
- Use the installer
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Also I know SLED10 and open suse are compatible same platform
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Up to a point. As what you are downloading depends on libraries and these libraries are updated over time, SLED 10 will (most likely) be compatible at the software level with some versions of OpenSuSE, but not all versions.
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but when you want to download something like an utility I thought all linux would be compatible.
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No. Aside from the libraries issue, there are several 'package' formats. DEB (debian and derivatives) and RPM (Redhat, SuSE and derivatives) are the two most popular, but a few others exist. These are not directly compatible.
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I can only download stuff created for suse? cause if not that would leave my system pretty limited to what its loaded from the factory.
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Repositories. The bigger distros (Debian, RedHat, SuSE) maintain repositories of pre-built apps for their specific systems - well, the smaller distros do too, but their repositories tend to be, err, smaller. You would normally find for one of the bigger distros 10,000+ programs available (even though you often have to set up additional repositories to get that many). While I can see that only 10,000 may be a bit limiting, its not really "limited to what its loaded from the factory".
One disadvantage of an enterprise distro like SLED is that there tends to be less 'stuff' available; in order to maintain the 'guaranteed stability', testing is nmore thorough and that means the distro makes fewer items of software available and some of those items are less bleeding edge.
