WM and Installation of New Programs
 

:study: Linux 101 :study:

Alright, I've been making my way through all of the quick start guides and FAQs that came with Mandrake 9.0 and have not been able to find an answer to a couple of questions. Hopefully, somebody here will shed some light.

First-- What is a WM and what is it used for.

Second-- How can I install a program. I understnd how to unzip a file into a directory...but that is about the extent of my knowledge.

An answer to these questions explained by either the command line or by the GUI will be a HUGE help at this point.

Many, many thanks!

Re: WM and Installation of New Programs
 

WM or Window Manager. Used for having something nice to look at.
After you untar the file (tar -zxvf for tar.gz or tar -jxvf for tar.bz2)
you should read the INSTALL file, but most of the time you can do:
./configure
make
su
make install
Nearly every distro has it's package system also, those are precompiled binaries for your system, RH & Mandy have rpm, debian has deb... Search LQ on how to install them.

iceman-- thank you. that worked. I appreciate your taking the time to 'clue me in.'

Window managers are programs that connect to the X server and provide the window with borders, control minimization and virtual desktops and generally manage the applications so you can interact with them. On Mandy you'll be using KWin which is fairly simple, but you can get far more complex ones (like enlightenment).

Installing programs is something you'll have to learn how to do the hard way. If you run into problems post questions here and search the archives, or ask in #linuxhelp on freenode

I apreciate your input...what is freenode?

The (most popular) open source IRC network.

http://freenode.net/ will tell you how to get onto it. #linuxhelp provides 24/7 realtime linux tech support. I am TD in that channel. There are often channels for specific projects as well.

Thanks. I'll go and check it out.