I think Mandrake has a package manager, a program that can automatically download and install the needed rpm packages for a certain program you ask it to. I am not a Mandrake user so I don't know what the program is called, but check to see if your system has
apt or
yum for example (type them in command line and press enter, you should either get a usage help message or a command not found). Manually downloading the .rpm packages and installing them by double-clicking or from command line by commanding
Code:
rpm -i packagename.rpm
is the second easiest choice; the difficult part in this is to find all the needed packages (i.e. if some package won't install unless you first install some other package).
To install an archived piece of software (like those that open up in Ark, files that end with .tar or .gz or .tgz or .bz2) depends completely on the contents. It could be source code that you need to compile (there are instructions on the web and here at LQ; search for
compiling) or it could include an install script (like
install.sh or
somename.run; in this case you would first make the file executable and then run it by typing it's name in command line, with file path, for example) or something else. Usually the archive has either or both of these two files inside:
INSTALL and
README. It's good to read both of them, if they are there: thy include instructions on how you install and handle the software.
To install the Flash player: the archive has an install script inside, which you can use to automatically install it (works if you have a Mozilla/Firefox browser that you have run at least once), or you can just copy the file which filename ends with
.so to your browser's plugin directory (i.e.
/home/your_user_name/.mozilla/plugins/), and restart your browser.
EDIT:
Quote:
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also what is the difference in a terminal and i think the root thig that you get when you push control and alt f7 is there any where to get the commands to use to do certain things.
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A terminal (terminal emulator, if you launch the small window which has command line inside) is a text-based way to interact with your shell, the thing that looks like a DOS prompt and does stuff when you write commands to it. If you press a key sequence like CTRL+ALT+F1 (trough F6), you'll get a console; that is, a text based login - type your username, then password (note: nothing is shown, but it is written) and you're in and can start giving commands. The same key sequence but from F7 to F12, usually, takes you to a graphical X server if it's running. Typically it's only on one graphical tty, the one that is found behind F7, the others are "blank". X server is a thing that lets graphical programs show their windows, it handles your mouse and keyboard, screen etc. and is run from the command line; so X server is basically a program of one kind, though a big one, and like it says, a 'server'. Usually it's started by the initscripts so you don't have to separately log in at the text console and start it by typing startx for example, but you could do that as well if you configured it that way.
A good place to start learning the basic Linux interpreter/shell commands and so on is at www.linuxcommand.org - check it out, there is quite a lot of stuff, but surely you can find what you need there. Commands like 'rpm' are not listed there I think, but after you get an idea of how you work with shells like BASH (the one usually used), you'll learn your way around. The commands that you write in command line are actually (in addition to built-in commands etc.) just program names, that the shell then executes for you.
