Ok, I downloaded a couple of Linux programs from tucows. How do you install them? They are zipped and I don't see an "install" or "setup" I am so used to seeing in Windows. Do I need a separate installer. I use Mandrake 8.2. Is there one already there that I don't know about?

When you say they are zipped do you mean they have a .zip suffix? If so you can unzip them by doing(yes you guessed it):

unzip filename

Then change into the directory created when you unzipped the file:

cd filename

Hmmmm....Now see what is in that directory. Some programs come with an install program like install.sh but it is more likely that you are going to have to install it from source.

oops sorry, because I don't have a modem that I can use in Mandrake yet, I have to use Windows. It always shows compressed files to be ZIP. My bad.

One is a *.tar, the other...I'm not sure.

I did find kpackage and used it but afterward I didn't see an icon on my desktop for the new app. nor could I find it by browsing around in the directories. Any suggestions?

Okay let me try and give you a play by play here for downloading, unpacking, and installing a tar file. First you download the file to a directory. Lets say you download a file called unpackme.tar to your /home/user/downloads directory. Open up a shell as root and do this:

1. cd /home/user/downloads

2 tar -xzvf unpackme.tar

3. cd unpackme

4. ./configure

5. make

6. make install

Okay step one moves to the /home/user/downloads directory. Step two untars the tarred file for you. Step three moves you into the directory that was just created by the untarred package.

Now steps 4,5, and 6 are usually what you will have to do if you are installing from source. It is imperative that you read the README or INSTALL file in the /home/user/downloads/unpackme directory. This will tell you exactly how to install the package. There may be an easier way then steps 4,5, and 6 or there may be some special switches you have to add to the ./configure command.

Once Again:

READ THE README FILE!!!!!

Ok, I'll try that thanks. How come nobody ever wrote an installer program, you know, to make things easier? ALso Is it true only certain package extensions will work in Mandrake?

Oh, and thanks again.

yeah not working.

I get as far as the tar -xzvf ______.tar.gz, then I get a "bad command...yadayadayada" or something like that.

Tell me about these "tar", tar.gz", "gz2", etc... I assume they are for different platforms, no?

If so, what should I be looking for the KDE environment version 2.2 on Mandrake.

Or should I just give up 'cause I'm too dense to get this?

One more thing...
Slackware? RPM?

explain please.

Tar is an archiver; gzip is a compression program. A .tar file is simply a string files in one. A tar.gz or tar.Z or whatever it may be called is an archived AND compressed file. The commands you issue to access them depend on the format, but any Linux app can be packed that way for any Linux environment.

Slackware is a distribution. Red Hat is another distribution that made the Red Hat Package Manager and .rpm's are - if I'm not mistaken - an archive, maybe compressed, of binaries rather than source code (unless they're .RPMS rather than .RPM) and docs and special files to tell the RPM app how to deal with them. It's supposed to make installing and uninstalling apps easier, but I see it as a semi-proprietary pain Red Hat inflicted on everybody. However, a lot of other distributions use RPM, so you'll be able to install them with varying degrees of success. The command for that is rpm -i foo and so on.

Oh, and .bz/.bz2 is another thing like gzip, I think - maybe a Berkley compression algorithm?

As far as the tar -zxvf command crapping out on you, make sure it's installed and in the right place and on your path and that your tarball isn't corrupt. You are getting the error right on unpacking, not on making right?

And, yeah, it is confusing, but it's just a bunch of apps using a bunch of methods to pack other apps for Linux boxes. It doesn't concern the end user too much except for matching up the commands with the compressions.

As far as why no installer... y'know, I have no real idea. However, I prefer to install something where I can see what it's going to do before it does it (as long as I can figure it out) rather than having it do stuff and having to go back after it and figure out how it might have screwed up my system. In Win, I prefer zips to installers. And it also has to do with being theoretically more portable and more optimized for your system, I think - certain options can be taken or avoided to optimize the app for your system. Though anything that can be checked and altered manually could be checked and altered by script. I don't really know. I'll shut up now. Hope some of that helped.

If you want to install something with mandrake you best bet is to get it as a rpm.That can be installed by the mandrake installer.Also try to find a rpm that is for mandrake.One for another distro might work but not all the time.You can try searching at rpmfind for whatever it is you need.

Ok, I found the problem. Because it ended in ".gz", i needed to "gzip -d" it first. How come nobody told me this? ANyway, when I "./configure", I get a line which says "configure: error: no acceptable cc in $path". I tried twice on two separate packages with the same result. Oh, I gorgot something, at root I cannot enter the directory where I have this package saved...I wonder why?

That means that you either don't have a complier installed or it isn't in your path or the app doesn't like the compiler you got.Check if you got gcc installed.gz this bz that and bz2 another thing - I usually just hit the 'extract here' thing - me gui guy!
If you saved the packages as a user you might not be able to extract them as root if you got paranoid file permission settings.You should be able to change ownership to root and get in there anyway.Besides you don't need to be root for ./configure and make - only for make install.

......a setup tool does exist in SuSE in the form of YAST. (Yet Another Setup Tool I believe!)

Being a Windoze convert learning as I go along I have got my head around .rpm files and alike but YAST helped out a lot in the early days. Just double click on a binary, .rpm etc and YAST does the rest.

Don't know if you can use it for Mandrake......

Oh by the way, not sure if it is what you mean, but I fell foul of the unable to get to the root directory thing. Turns out my old DOS habits were holding me back. Try typing cd .. [cd space ..] to get to the real root directory (and not cd.. as in DOS)

ok Crash...I'm confused again. Pretend I'm new. "gcc", is that an app? Just type it in the command line? What if I don't have it. Do I need it? Is there a way around it? Like I said, pretend I'm new.

Ok,gcc is the GnuCompilerCollection .Thats used to make binaries out of source packages.When you do ./configure and it gives you that error about cc means that the compiler wasn't found.Now there are different possibilities.Your mandrake version is about a year old.If a compiler is installed it might be gcc2.96.Some apps don't like this one.It could be that there is no compiler installed at all.You need to check with the mandrake package manager and look for something 'gcc'.It's probably under dev or development packages - sorry,I am not familiar with mandrake.Your best bet is still to find a rpm package of the app in question and install that.What are you installing anyway?

Don't give up.
Could you please list the package names?