y'see i want to play stepmania (www.stepmania.com)
and so when i try to run, it says it requires sdl v 1.2.6, so i've downloaded

sdl 1.2.6 rpm,
sdl anim. tar.gz
sdl dev rpm
sdl image rpm
sdl mixer rpm

and if i try to run the rpms, says there is a conflict with the existing sdl files
and i've tried double click,
using gno rpm and clicking update

and even using

rpm -U filename.rpm

and none work. why the heck not, and how can i work around this short of uninstaling allt he sdl (because of lots of mdk progs. taht need it
this isn't cool, and he agrees ~~~>

I just dealt with this very issue today.

You have to uninstall SDl 1.2.5 on the command-line, using the following command:

rpm -e --nodeps libSDL1.2-1.2.5-12mdk

The -e option means erase, or uninstall, and the --nodeps option means that the package manager won't check for dependencies. Mandrake won't complain and it won't uninstall other applications.

Now install SDL 1.2.6 using the following command.

rpm -i SDL-1.2.6-1.i386.rpm

This worked quite well for me and I was able to run Stepmania (which was what I was trying to run too). I checked to see if any of the application dependent on 1.2.5 still ran, and the one I checked (Frozen-Bubble) still worked fine.

Unfortunately Stepmania runs at about 2 FPS on my machine. My friend has that same problem. Our machines aren't the fastest (Pentium III 850MHz), but they're not *that* slow. If you have any solution for the slowness problem, let me know.