Okay,

So I have Suse 8.2 personal up and running with Ximian Desktop 2 and Ximian Evolution. Besides that and GAIM I have nothing running because I do not know:

1. Where to install applications or how do get shortcuts to them in my application menu's
2. What MP3 player I should get
3. Do I have to call each application through the terminal?

Those wise and savvy Linux user please help me understand how to work this OS.

Thanks! Any suggestions are welcome.

1) if you installed suse standard package (since you're newbie i believe you have), you should have all the applications you need already installed. their shortcuts should be somwhere in the kicker (start menu)
2) you've probably (not knowingly) already installed xmms, wich is winamp-like player, it's quite nice..
3) no, you can do it from a kicker

I found XMMS and it doesn't seem to load my MP3s into its playlist

I copied them from a windows directory, do I need to modify them (It was XP under NTFS).

ok....let me try and suggest u some idea...

But I dont have SUSE....I use RedHat 9 and Mandrake...however, these actions r common to all distros...

first let me guide u in installing an application...

lets suppose you are installing yahoo messenger....(new version is now available on yahoo site for unix)

now since u r a newbie, download yahoo messenger for SUSE as a .rpm file. So, that file will be named something like

ymessenger1.0.4-1.0.i386.rpm

(this is assumed name....i dont remember the exact file name)

now log in as a normal user and switch to the directory where you downloaded this file (lets say /home/download). Now give the commands:

$ cd /home/download
$ rpm -ivh ymessenger1.0.4-1.0.i386.rpm

If you do not get any error message, then assume that it is installed.

Now Click the 'Menu button' (Start button in "MS Windows") and Click 'Run Program' and then type 'ymessenger'.

This command will launch the installation setup for yahoo messenger.

In case of programs which you wanna make shortcuts for..do the following:

Click Menu -> Find Files

Enter name of file to search ....lets say 'xmms' and click 'Find'

Now, select the file that is an executable...(You can right click the filename and check properties to see if it is an executable or not)

Drag the file to the desktop...Now it will ask you whether you wanna copy the file, move the file or put a link.....choose 'make link' ...and there you get a shortcut on desktop for 'xmms'....Follow the same procedure for all application programs..

By the way...most user applications are stored in

/bin, /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin

2. You can get xmms (mp3 player) from any site.....

http://www.sourceforge.net
http://www.freshrpms.net

search on this forum itself and you'll get many posts similar to yours.

3. You wil have to run from terminal only those applications that do not have a link anywhere....mostly such programs are third party programs like yahoo messenger....However, you can locate the executable and make a link in the way I told u....

Thanks for the help,

What do I do with .run and tar.gz files? And one is a .bin file

also SH files? What do I do with them. I just downloaded music match jukebox for Linux and it is

install-mmjb-1.43.sh

So i tried RPM and TAR but it wouldn't work.

Any ideas?

just run it with something like this
in the directory where the file is

with a .gz file you run:
gunzip filename

.sh

sh filename or ./filename