Hi,

I will like to know more about installing software in linux. In what way is it different from windows? ( In windows, it's just point and click). For linux, there seems to be no such easy way. What are the methods for installing software for linux? I have heard that there is rpm and those tar files. What are the general steps a user should do with them in order to install the software in linux?

Next, its about C programming in linux. I use the gnome text editor to create the text file and then save it to disk. Then at the command line, i typed 'gcc - ansi hello.c -o hello ' where hello is the program name. The compilation seemed to go fine. However when i attempted to run the program by typing hello or hello.c at the command prompt, there is always a message saying file not found. May I know why this happens? I followed the steps in my notes exactly but it cant run. Btw, my notes are written for Unix HP workstations but i guess they can be used in linux as well.

Please reply.....thanks!

To install software, you can either use the rpm command on .rpm files, or compile, using the make command, the source code, following the directions in the INSTALL or README files. I personally like compiling myself, because rpm is stupid on my computer and doesn't like to work. Source code usually comes in the form of *.tar.bz2, or *.tar.gz, either zipped with bzip or gzip. uncompress *.tar.bz2 with tar -xzvf "filename" and .gz with tar -xjvf "filename"

As for making programs run, use chmod ugoa+x "filename" to give everyone executable permissions. then run

to run a program that you compiled use :
./program_name