rpms's and tar.gz's? please help!
 

Hello people.
I am new to linux, and I am having a rough time installing packages. All the literature and online help I have found have all made it seem simple to install rpm's on RH 9, but when i attempt to follow them, nothing happens. When I type rpm -i whatever-package-1.0.rpm when in terminal, it always fails, and when I am missing dependancies, even when i install them, they say something about how it is being installed but that the package may not still find it, and then it gives some cryptic message about re-routing something or other. When i run ./configure after opening tar.gz files, I get much the same result. I had no problem with getting flash to work, and AIM [ which i quickly ditched for GAIM ; ) ]. Ive been trying to get mplayer and xmms to work for days, and no matter how mnay how-to's i find, they just dont help at all!
I am an employed IT professional making the jump to linux, and this problem is killing me.
Help me not lose faith! Any help is greatly valued!
Thank you

Install Apt4Rpm - it will help with the dependencies and will help with the downloads.

Trickykid's howto install programs will also be of help: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=45094

Welcome to LQ.

It may be Redhat. I used to use Mandrake(uses the same stuff as Redhat) and I had a terrible time with dependences. Nothing seemed to work and I only could get a few things installed tarballs or RPMs! I think it may have to do with the diffrent versions of Redhat and if a RPM is made for one it will die on a newer/older one.

Now I use Slackware and nearly all of my tarballs(Slackware dosn't use RPMs) work out of the tar and by following the README :D I can get the other 10% working.

Try reading the website of the software very carefully about other libs/software you need and just use tarballs instead of this RPM crap.

EDIT:

Wow! I wish I had known about apt4rpm when I used Mandrake err no I don't because if I had I never would have got Slackware!:D

Still it would be good to stick with Redhat for awhile using apt4rpm.

"More apt4rpm Please!"

for instance, when i try to install mplayer, Im using :

rpm -ivh mplayer-common-1.0pre3-1.i386.rpm mplayer-1.0pre3-1.i386.rpm mplayer-gui-1.0pre3-1.i386.rpm mplayer-skin-default-1.0-2.noarch.rpm

which returns the errors:

libmp3lame.so.0 is needed by mplayer-1.0pre3-1

goto http://www.rpmfind.net and download libmp3lame and install it first...