Hi, I am pretty new to Linux. Right now I am running Mandrake, and everything seems to be working well, except when I install something, I have no idea where it has gone. It seems strange to me that Mandrake has this nice installation utility, and it doesn't even do a simple task like add your programs to the star menu. Nor does it ask what file folders you want to install to. So after installation, your files just disappear. Never to be found again. I have recently installed wine and yahoo messenger for linux, and cannot find either of them. How are you supposed to find stuff in Mandrake? The search utility is worthless. Also, I don't know Unix, so the konsole doesnt do me much good either. Could somebody please help me figure this out?

When you install something using Mandrake packages it will install an entry to the menu, although there'll usually be a 1 or 2 minute delay before this happens. Mandrake makes this a requirement for all their packages which contain GUI programs. If you haven't setup your sources at http://easyurpmi.zarb.org and aren't installing programs through menu->System->Configuration->Packaing then your most likely aren't using packages made for Mandrake and so you aren't getting the menu entries.

Linux has a defined File Heirarchy Standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/) specifying where different types of files should be installed to - it avoids the dogs-breakfast arrangement that eventuates on Windows PCs. The files don't dissapear anywhere, in fact they are registered by the package management system. If you go into menu->System->Configuration->Packaing->Remove Software and set 'Maximum Information' you'll find you can browse what you have installed and see the files installed listed (You can do the same thing from the command line with rpm -ql packagename if you prefer).

Most executable files (ie. the equivalent to Windows .exe files) will be installed into /usr/bin or /bin (with ones for root in /usr/sbin or /sbin). It doesn't matter though because you can just go menu->Run Command and type the name of the executable to run it - your PATH setting will automatically include the common directories like /usr/bin where executables are installed.

Hey, thanks for that! That helps a lot! I have found the programs I am looking for. Now if I can only get Wine to run. Most of the installs are in USR/BIN but clicking on them does nothing. It seems like it should at least activate the console or something...

Most programs from Mandriva repos will automatically appear in your menu (some cli tools don't appear in the menu). If you don't know where the program is in the menu, don't hesitate to explore.

If you double-click on them from KDE it only runs GUI programs. You should run whatever programs you want with men->Run Command and typing in the name, it will automatically look in /usr/bin for that app. Anyway if you install Mandrake RPMs they will be in the menus. If you have programs which you didn't install from Mandrake RPMs then you can add them to the menu - right-click on the menu and select 'Edit Menus' or 'Menu Editor', whatever it is. You can also make shortcuts on the desktop or in folders by right-clicking and choosing Create New->File->Link to Application

Well, I installed wine using the mandrake software utility, and it definately isnt anywhere in the star menu. I also tried run-> wine, and it did nothing. The files are there, they just don't do anything.

Okay, evidently I was trying to hard. I guess all you have to do to use wine is when you want to open an executable file, then tell it to open with wine. That will open it, but then using the file is quite another story. I just "installed" soulseek on my computer. When selecting where to install it it gave me such options as C:\windows\program files! What the hell! no such files exist! Maybe installing wine automatically installs windows 3.x? This is all pretty confusing. I really like Linux and the open source model, but by making the switch you are seriously giving up some cool applications unless you can get programs such as wine to work how they are supposed to...

Wine is a command line tool so will not appear in your menu (like I stated in my previous post). Wine does not install windows but mimics the Windows paths and the Windows programs it installs are somewhere in ~/.wine.

If there is a problem with the menu entry for the yahoo messenger it may have to do with a menu bug of some sort. I know that many people have reported bugs with the menu not showing installed programs or not being able to edit the menu. Most people don't have any issues with it though. On my computer in Mandriva LE 2005, in order to get menu entries to show up I have to open up the menu editor (you can get to it by right clicking on the menu button), and then hit the save button. The menu entries are made automatically, but they simply won't show up until I do that little work around. It's not a big deal and doesn't take much time, so it has never bugged me very much. Anyway, you can look around the forums for other issues users have had and see if any of their suggestions work for you if you continue to have problems. The Mandriva menu is actually very organized and easy to navigate through when it is working correctly. It's probably the main reason why I like the distro so much.

If menu items don't appear then do the following as a normal user,
If the rpms are not designed specifically for Mandriva, then they may never appear in the menu unless you create an entry manually.

Well, none of that seemed to work. As far as the menus are concerned I guess I will jus have to manually add the things I want on there with the menu editor.

Regaurding wine though Redazz, I still have more questions. I looked in the wine folder, and I didn't see soulseek in there. If it is in there, there is no executable file for it. How do I find and run a program after installing it with wine?

Most likely if you installed soulseek it would have installed to something like:

/home/(yourusername)/.wine/Program Files/Soulseek/(thenameoftheexecutable) ... could be something like soulseek.exe

or something like that. I believe that in order to run it with wine, you'll probably have to cd to the directory containing the soulseek executable and then type i.e.:

wine ./soulseek.exe

Of course, I don't know what the actual names of any of these files or folders are, so you'll have to find out. It could be soulseek.exe, or sseek.exe, or start.exe... who knows.

Wine is meant to be run from a command line, so you should learn to use it that way. It will give you more information if it fails for any reason.

If icons didn't show up in your menu still, it's pretty easy to add them. Again, right clicking on the menu button can take you to the menu editor which is pretty straight forward to use. You just need to be able to locate the file that runs the program. If you know the name of the program, it's pretty easy to find the correct location using the whereis command. If you wanted to know where the firefox executable is:

whereis mozilla-firefox

would return the location of the file that runs the program.

Problems with the menu are one of the main bugs I've seen complaints about for Mandriva. I'm hoping it gets fixed somewhat in the 2006 release. I'll probably upgrade to that version at some point. I don't really mind though as the problems I have with the menu are very minimal and very easy to work around (opening menu editor and hitting save probably takes less time than opening a new terminal and updating the menu manually).

EDIT: Also, check the wine headquarters site as there are pointers on how to get this program running. Otherwise, you may end up with a headache trying to configure the program. Here is a link:

http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=1244

Hey, thanks! I think wine was just acting like it was going to install soulseek, and wasn't actually doing it. Running wine in console mode will probably help me figure out why it is not working though. Thanks for the help!