First off, let me apologize if this has already been discussed. I tried to search the forums for topics regarding my problem(s), but couldn't find anything. (I didn't really know what to search for, so I admit I didn't look too hard. )

Before I get into any of the questions/problems however, let me describe to you my system in case that has an affect on things.

MB: Asus A7N8X deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 1900XP
RAM: 256MB PC2700
Video: GeForce FX5200
Hard drive: Western Digital 36GB serial ATA (Raptor)

I had Win2k installed on my computer. This past weekend, I partitioned the HD so that I had a Linux partition on which to install RedHat 9. The new partition was roughly 10GB. I still have Win2k on the other partition.

Now that I am finally running linux, it seems to be acting very strange. For example, most recently, I am having trouble installing the mpg123 rpm package (forgive me if my wording/vocabulary is incorrect. I am completely new to linux). I d/led it into my /home directory and when I double click on it the "preparing system update" window opens and it does its thing. Afterwards, nothing happens at all. I've installed other programs and they've all come up with a dialogue window that lets me continue the install. I'm not sure if mpg123 does all of that automatically or not, but if it doesn't, why isn't it continuing with the install? I tried using rpm -i <filename> while logged into root and all it said was "warning: <filename>: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 0bee1634" I've been sitting here for 30 mins and it has not done anything since. There is no # prompt again, so that tells me it is still working. Is that correct? What is it doing exactly, if anything? Why is it so slow?

On that note, linux in general seems to be quite slow at times. And by slow, I mean, things don't always work. In windows, if I tried to do something and it wasn't executed immediately, either the entire system would slow down or freeze. In linux, even though nothing executes, everything else runs perfectly fine. This is very confusing, because I don't know if the task has been executed or not. There have been numerous times that I've had to redouble click something or enter a command again to get it to work. Unfortunately, I do not remember exactly what I did or what command I entered which resulted in this odd behavior. (Isn't that always the case when posting to a forum?)

I d/led something that I want to remove from my computer. I just learned that that is not as easy as it is in Windows. After looking around on the internet, I came across the command rpm -e <filename> (I think that is it) however, I don't think that always works. Someone mentioned that I might need to manually remove every file associated with the program in order to completely uninstall it. I did a search for any files containing the name of the program I want to uninstall. I then deleted them all from my computer. If I look at the directories via Nautilus I don't see the files anymore (good thing) but if I do a search for the program it still lists all of the files (bad thing). I thought that perhaps the "search for files" application was not working correctly and just showing things that weren't really there. However, when I double click the program to install it (I actually want to reinstall it after I remove it.) it says the program is already installed, so I know that I did not remove everything/uninstall it correctly. Can someone please tell me how to remove programs from my computer. BTW, the program is Opera, although I don't think that matters.

That is all I can think of for now. I thought I had a lot more problems, but I guess I'm better off that I thought hehe. Again, I'm sorry if this has all been discussed already and for making such a long post. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.

-till next time (as I'm sure there will be many)
Seppe

let's say this is an rpm package you downloaded( imaginary name): opera-1.0.5-bin.rpm

to install it you would do (as root): rpm -ivh opera-1.0.5-bin.rpm
to remove it (as root): rpm -e opera

so, to install use the full file-name. to remove, only the name of the program. and no, you don't have to go remove files manually.

also, you don't click on files thinking they will pop-up an installer, like in windows. open a terminal , and type the commands in.

i dont know why your machine is slow.

If you notice such strange behavior again, note down the program name and after a while try to run it the same way. Then again. Check if the same thing happens every time or not. Then please post the results of your findings, with the program's name (and version).

ive been having the same problems. Like when i want to open a file in a text editor, it just wont open. Also, a lot of games do not show up when i try to open them. its kinda weird.

is that file ur trying to open under ur home dir?

If you're wondering if something application is still trying to do its thing, try typing this at the command line: ps auxw | grep <program name>

Like if you want to see if rpm is still trying to figure something out: ps auxw| grep rpm

Typing 'ps auxw' alone will tell you everything that's running along with memory and cpu stats.

I've got Opera running now. Thanks for the help everyone.

Linux isn't slow, you are running RH9 right? Well the reason why your system is slow has to do with many things, like the fact that RH starts a lot of services at boottime(those lines that end with [ OK ]). Those are all in memory, memory that could be used for something else. There is probably some control panel somewhere where you can control those services, this is distro specific.
The other thing that makes RH slow is the fact that RH's kernel is large. It supports way more features and hardware then you need or have. So recompiling the kernel with the support exactly matched for your hardware could speed up things a lot.

Personnaly I advise to cut in your services and wait a little before compiling a kernel till your a little more experienced. Actually since RH quit and Fedora isn't very easy as well, I would try some more things out on RH and then go to Slackware(not easy but fast) or Mandrake(very easy but a little slow).
Another thing... if you want speed, check out for some more RAM, seriously you can't have enough, it could speed up thing drastic.