I am basically a Linux Newbie. I am running Suse and I love it. Only one problem, I have great difficulty in installing any .rpm packages that I download.

Is there some kind of installer program that you can use for Suse which is easy to use, like the Windows installer?

Yes--I think it is called YAST. In your menus, you will find a command to install software (or something to that effect). That is your installer.

More generically, there are several "package managers"--RPM being one of the most popular.

What is the difficulty with .rpm downloads? Are you using a terminal?
What happens when you do: rpm -i filename (without the .rpm suffix)?

We don't have the slick sophistication of the Windows installer--what we have is better!!

Well, I gave Yast a try. But it wanted me to import a .sel file, not sure what that is... I couldn't import .rpm or .tar.gz

I tried to update firefox, but I have no idea how to install it from a .tar.gz file

Put the .tar.gz file in the directory where you want Firefox (Can be anywhere, but most typical would be /opt, or /usr/local

Type "tar -xvf filename"
You now will have a folder name "firefox". CD to it and ls--you should see a file simply named "firefox" If so, just type "./firefox" and you are on your way.

In a similar situation, you might wind up with a bunch of .rpm files. In this case--with them all in one directory, you would install with: "rpm -i *.rpm"

Thanks once again for your super fast reply, I really do appreciate it.

I just wanted to check by "CD it" did you mean burn it onto CD?

no.... "cd" means change directory, in the terminal you type "cd ______" to naviagate folders.

Ok, thanks for that.

This is what I did:

colin@linux:~> tar -xvc firefox-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
(I opened the terminal in the right folder)

Then it said:

"tar: You may not specify more than one `-Acdtrux' option
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information."

you can't use -xvc, you need either "-xvjf" or "-xvf" what did "tar --help" tell you?

Thanks for pointing that out.

I just ge a different error now

colin@linux:~> tar -xvjf firefox-1.5.0.1.tar.gz
tar: firefox-1.5.0.1.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors


The same happened for tar -xvf

Okay, try this instead. In KDE, right click on the archive(the .tar.gz file) and there should be a menu popping up. One of the options is "extract" with a pullout. Extract it to where you need it, if permissions are an issue, just extract it where it is, and copy the folder once uncompressed. If you don't have permissions to the location, you will have to either login as root to do it(which you can then do the whole process graphically, rather than in console), or use the console with a command called "su" to give yourself root. Then you can "cp -r /path/to/folder /desired/path/to/folder".

Ok, thanks.

And once that is done, how do I install it?

Now, that said, that is again CLI.

For a much greater sense of ease in SUSE 10, you really should just use a SuSE 10 rpm for firefox 1.5.0.1. Getting installable scripts, and tar.gzs is a generic way to install files across all distros. SuSE has a wonderful package manager called YAST, and easy access to most software, especially common things like firefox and thunderbird.

Ok. But when I click on a .rpm it just opens up the terminal window. How do I actually install it?

In SuSE 10.0, unless the file is one the desktop, when you double click it from the file manager in both KDE and gnome, it should open IN THE SAME PANE, a choice of install with YAST or something else I have never picked. You just want to install the rpms, I have no idea why it would open terminals for you... are you double clicking from desktop or from the file manager?

You also have a ton of options with YAST available to you, which is one of the strongest points of SuSE. You should check out YAST, and do some reading. It is really powerful and very easy to use. You can set up software repositories giving you access to almost anything, never having to touch the command line.