So when I d/l a .tar or rpm I do so in my /home/downloads dir that I made. Should I move the file before I untar it? Once I untar it and it makes a dir in my d/l folder and I install the proggy, is it okay to del the dir in my d/l dir?

Also, I tried to install the latest GAIM tonight. I d/l the rpm and ran it. I get the messege

error: failed dependencies:
libgtkspell.so.0 is needed by gaim-0.72-1mdk9.1

so I find libgtkspell.so.0 and install it. But I still get the same error messege. I'm trying to get an MSN messenger to work and AMSN didn't install either. Says I was missing 4 files there.
Any ideas? Did I miss something on my mandrake 9.1 install?

Your first question. If it's an rpm, it doesn't matter which directory you install from. You can then hold on to it or dispose of it depending on your wishes. For .tar.gz files, it's OK to untar them in your home directory. It's more standard to untar them in a subdirectory of /usr/src. Then once you've finished installing it, it's a good idea to compress the source and store it (in /usr/src). That way you can do a make uninstall if ever you wish to get rid of the program. Otherwise it tends to get messy with compile-from-source apps.

Your second question is what people call "dependency hell". Mandrake, I believe, has a dependency checking program. It's called urpmi or something like that. I don't use mandrake so I don't know anything about it but try to use that. There is also a port of the debian app apt-get. Have a look around google/linux and sourceforge for it. If urpmi doesn't do it for you, it's well worth investing a few days to a week to get apt4rpm installed and working. It will save you from dependency hell. If you don't want to do the above, you'll need to download every dependency individually and install them simultaneously.