I am a new user having installed mandrake 9.0 which I got from linux format. I have been impressed by everything apart from installing programs which I have downloaded. How do I install them? Average users will not move to linux unless it is easy to install programs.

Please email me.
Thank you.

Everything seem difficult when as to be done for the first time.

Installing programs ? Follow this nice tutorial :
http://www.siliconvalleyccie.com/rpm

Have fun !

Yes, installing software is a known issue, I personally am working on this in fact

For now however you'll just have to put up with the sucky system we currently use. If the software you downloaded has a mandrake 9 RPM then download and install that (you can probably just click on it). If it doesn't (and it probably won't) then you need the .tar.gz file, and then you have to compile it from the source. There are lots of posts in this forum explaining how to do this, so search for it and if you get stuck reply to this thread and we'll try and sort you out.