i am a complete beginner to linux. i am trying to learn the OS to increase my computer knowledge. please bear with me. when you double click on an rpm file, where does the package install itself? i downloaded realvnc for linux and ran the .rpm. it completed the package installation but i cannot figure out how to run the program. any help would be appreciated. thank you.

Open a terminal and type without the quotes "realvnc" That's opening the program. Your programs usually get installed in /usr/bin. I think the only exceptions I saw were with programs compiled from source.

You can use the whereis command that will tell you where your program is loaded.

The 'locate' command is pretty useful aswell (although can sometimes give what seems like *too much* information at times)

open a terminal (shell) and type
vncserver
if you are prompted for a password this is a good sign you then verify the password. and then you have started your first linux vncserver you can test it with a browser by doing localhost:5801 or by typing in:
vncviewer localhost:01 in a different shell. If you are prompted for a password this is a good sign.
if you shutdown or reboot and want to use it again you have to do vncserver on the konsole(shell) again and you will not be prompted for your password read the out put though
because it give you the window number that you need to be logging in to.
An example: I did vncserver for the second time today and the output was log 2
so to login I had to do:
vncviewer localhost:02
or
localhost:5802 in a browser
you may want to edit /home/yourusername/.vnc/xstart ,,,where it says twm you change it to kde if that is the desktop you are using.

./realvnc might work as well. There should be a readme document somewhere that tells you the exact steps to run the program.