I have a bunch of questions being new to Mandrake Linux and all.

First off, and the most important question I have is how do I install programs I've downloaded? Do you treat each download differently because there may be different install instructions? For example, I would like to install Macromedia Flashplayer which I've downloaded. How would I go about doing that?

Secondly, does anyone know of a good weather program for Linux (something like the weatherbug or The Weather Channel's program?

Thirdly, does anyone know if there are drivers that would support a Creative Nomad II mp3 player and an Olympus D-550 digital camera?

Lastly, are there any other programs besides Xine that will play DVD's?

Installing software will depend on the the format it is packaged in. The are thousands: source code, binary, rpm's, source rpm's etc etc etc...

As far as flash, you will want to read the README or INSTALL file for specific instructions. If the file ends with tar.gz then you need to uncompress it using 'tar xzf <filename>' and it will create a directory. cd into it and there should be instructions.

There is a good sticky thread on installing software in the Linux-General forum, so give that a read.

mplayer will play dvd's

Ok when you say to use tar xzf do u mean to use it in the shell or in my home browser? Here's what happened when I tried installing MPlayer:

[liesl@localhost liesl]$ tar xzf MPlayer-0.91
tar (child): MPlayer-0.91: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

What am I doing wrong? This is prob pretty simple but I'm new to Linux...

The command is:

tar -xzf MPlayer-0.91.tar.gz
to look up what the parameters mean type in man <command name>

an example would be:

man tar

well you got that error cause you didn't include the file extension for the tarball....so thats why it says the file doesn't exist, cause it actually doesn't

I have one problem trying to uncompress the MPlayer file and I think it's because it has a file extension tar.bz2 but I'm not sure. Here's what happened:

[root@localhost liesl]# tar -xzf MPlayer-0.91.tar.bz2
gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Also, once I uncompress the file what do I do from there? How do I use cd?? Thanks for all the help guys!

To extract from a *tar.bz2 file you will have to use the option "-j" in place of the "z" switch that you use for *tar.gz files. I would also recommend using the "-v" switch so you can see the extraction in process. When that is done you can "cd", or change directory to the newly extracted folder. To do this enter "cd" at the command prompt and then a space and hit the "TAB" key. This will give you a list of all files in the current folder. YOu can then type in the name of the new folder, or type in the first part of the name and hit the "TAB" key again to autocomplete whatever you are entering on the command line. It makes working at the terminal much easier. Once you are in the Mplayer folder you will see that there are a number of files like COPYING, README, INSTALL. Read those files and follow the instructions from there. Although since you said that you are using Mandrake and are a newbie to compiling progrmas and such at the command line I would advise you to use rpmdrake and urpmi to install mplayer. It's on your install CDs and will be installed painlessly and work right for sure. Either go to "Configuration>Packaging>Install Software" and select mplayer and other programs from the list, or su to root at a terminal and type "urpmi mplayer".

As for weather software, I know that if you are using KDE they have a option to scroll weather information across the taskbar. Also slashdot headlines, or news in general.

alright
if it it ends in .tar.gz or .tgz you use "tar -xzvf <filename>"

if it ends in tar.bz2 you use "tar -xjvf <filename>" so the z is for g-zipped files, and the j is for b-zipped files. I don't know why they don't just use g or b, probably used byother command line options, but those are the two big commands to know for unzipping tarred archives.

the switches again:

tar -xzvf
or
tar -xjvf



-Shade