i recently downloaded firefox, and after untarring it in the same directory as my tar was saved to, i want to move it. where are most programs installed, and what steps would i need to take to move this program? secondly, because until now all i've installed are rpms, how do i make a shortcut to firefox? either that or what's a very short command to open the program, rather than going to the directory and clicking the script?

With firefox you download the compiled binaries, just in tar/gzip format for compression.
Most system binaries are stored in /bin, most extra programs, for example kopete, mozilla, etc. are stored in /usr/bin.
You probably want to make a symbolic link from the binary in the directory where firefox is already to one in /usr/bin, as moving the whole folder around is a hastle.
Say I installed firefox into /home/paul/downloads/firefox, i'd do the following:

su root
ln -s /home/paul/downloads/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
chown paul:somegroup /usr/bin/firefox

Which makes a symbolic link (need to be root to put things in /usr/bin), and then changes the file's ownership to paul and somegroup, save you the hastle of becoming root again if you want to delete the file etc.

Now to make a shorcut to it:
rite click on the desktop: create new > file > link to application
Call it firefox or such, change the icon (theres a firefox icon in the icon directory in the firefox folder) and put the link to the application /usr/bin/firefox

You could have not put the symbolic link in /usr/bin altogether, but this way you can also do run > firefox without having to add a new place to the path.

Hope thats of some help

so far yes, that was very helpful. basically i've copied and pasted it? so now if i delete the original folder /home/cheechi/firefox will i lose it altogether?

i've done everything you told me but still not 100% sure what it is i've done

ok i tried deleting the original and the shortcut i made to the /usr/bin/firefox/firefox script would no longer work. isn't there a way to just move to a new parent directory?

Sure, you could untar the tarball into any directory you want and create a symlink in the same way :)

yeah i like that idea better...

i think the real issue i've stumbled into is how do i move stuff into folders that are only accessible to root? there's probably some terminal command i don't know, but every time i try to add pictures to /usr/share/wallpapers i'm told i don't have write access cause i'm not root. so what do i do? open a terminal and su root. then i try it again and same errorr happens. well now i'm sorta pissed at tux in general so i alt+F2 and su. it doesn't prompt me for a password but it also doesn't give me an error so i figure i did somethinng wrong with that too. still won't let me move stuff into the folder i want!

this is Mandy 10/KDE if that makes a difference

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean, when you are in a GUI environment you are logged in as your "user" with limited priveledges.

When you open a terminal and type in su / password, you become "Root" in the terminal only - the GUI environment stays as the normal user.

You probably should get familiar with the command line interface (CLI) since it makes life easier when you want to do stuff as root :), the command for moving files is

mv <source> <destination>

Please be careful - when you're root, you can easily destroy your computers data, by pulling the wrong command :)

Also, don't forget, when you are in a terminal, linux has auto name completion as standard:

Say you are in your home directory, and within that directory, you have a very long file name, e.g. "Foodirectory-1.0.4-gtk-tla"

You can type in "cd Foo<TAB>" and it'll auto complete unless there are multiple "Foodirectory-*".

Hope this helps ;), feel free to ask back for anything you're unsure of :)

If there is a directory or two that you know you'll be using mainly as a normal user (/opt, for example, or /usr/share/wallpaper), then run the chown command to make someone else the owner of the directory, and not root.
so from a terminal:

$ su
# chown -R paul:somegroup /usr/share/wallpaper
# exit

The code runs chown reccursively (it doesn't just change the ownership of everything in that directory, but every sub directory and files under it) and makes the new owner 'paul' who belongs to the group 'somegroup'.

WORD OF CAUTION:
don't make your user the owner of any of the important directories (/bin, /usr/bin, /usr/share), as if you get some form of malicious program on your computer it will be able to destroy your system.

I'm a Linux newbie, however I have discovered that in the GNOME terminal if I:

$su
#nautilus

I am now using Nautilus as root and can browse any folder, copy, move, delete anything I need to do, all via an easy-to-use GUI.

Similarly, I can run gedit and browse straight to a folder such as /etc, I can edit files as simply as if I was use Notepad.

I don't understand why this capability is not more widely disclosed.

Since I discovered that capability, it's turned around my earlier frustrations.

Cheechi, it sounds like you're having similar frustrations to what I used to go thru. Hopefully that will help.

I'm curious though why this capability is never talked about??

When you "su" to get root, you may execute program from root. For example:
su
ping hotmail.com
exit
Will ping hotmail as root. But ping is a program, like mv (move), cp (copy) and even nautilus or konqueror! So if you "su" to be root, and enter any command, it will be for root.

I'm using Konqueror (a Norton Commander clone) and run it as root sometimes as it is easier than the command line...

Edit: Oops, its not Konqueror but Krusader!!!
http://krusader.sourceforge.net/

it's much easier than the command line, thanks! i've written down the mv command also, in case it's quicker than graphical copy/paste. i never knew about the tab autocmplete, usually if i have filename.extension i just type fil*.extension and get similar results. i'll have to try that tab thing sometime. is there a good list of CLI commands with decent explanations anywhere? aside from RTFM since i have the downloaded ISOs

man is your friend. Try `man man`. You may also want to read `man bash` (I presume you use bash)

unless something else loads by default, then i must be using bash i haen't screwed around with much on here, just installing programs posed a big enough challenge for me

I think you don't have the choice of RTFM... I suggest you buy a reference book. That way if you want to "copy files", go into the index and look for "copy files" I bought a Red Hat 9 book reference and even if RH9 is outdated and I'm using Mandrake 10, it is still really usefull for those kind of search! Those command lines are pretty the same on each linux distros... "cp" will always be copy...

Maybe a old book can do the thing. When I bought this book, I wanted the most recent and so I got the less cheap... But since I'm still using it I think I could have just bought an old one really cheaper...

This is one of the best online references I've found. Go there. Read. Learn. Bookmark it.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere