Whenever I read books on Linux, even beginner books, they tell me "just go to the terminal" or just "type it in the Shell" Well that's great guys, but

a) Where is the shell?

b) What do you need to type in it to get my programs installed?

Sorry if I sound like I'm losing my temper, but everyone sounds so comfortable doing this! If someone could help that would rock.

P.S. Is the "terminal" anything like MS-Dos Prompt on Windows?

a) the terminal is your command prompt... it should look similiar to this: yourname@yourmachinename: ~$
It's like the ms dos command prompt, but way more powerfull.
if you don't use a graphical login, this is what you should see, after you login.
otherwise you need to start a terminal emulator like xterm, eterm, aterm, gnome-terminal ...
how you start one of that depends on your window manager, but there should be something like "command-line" oder "terminal" in your menus.

b) depends on the program you want to install, if it's a tgz package use "installpkg packagename", some programs provide *.bin files which you have to execute or you can compile the program it by yourself (usually ./configure , ./make , ./make_install ).

hope this helps a bit, otherwise try asking more specific questions about installing software (which program, filetype, how did you try it, error messages, ...).

very much so, but i don't think the linux console likes being equated to dos...

go to your main menu, and you should have something similar to start->run -- then you can try typing in 'konsole' (which is a popular console program for KDE. or 'xterm' might get you one... but otherwise you'll have to look through your main menu to find a link... it'd probably be under 'system' menu, or similar

given that you don't know about the terminal, i'd assume you don't run slackware (which defaults to a non-graphical login) and therefore installpkg won't work for you...

you'd be looking for something more along the lines of rpm -ivh somepackage.rpm

but i bet you'd prefer the graphical "Package Manager" or yast in suse should have that functionality

edit:
AND: ./make ./make_install won't do it -- it'd be ./configure && make && make install

Oh yes, please undesrtand I was simply trying to make sense of this since I am new to Linux and needed a comparison. I am in no way implying Microsoft above Tux.

But Actually I will run Slackware, actually a distro called Minislack. I have it on CD, I just don't have it up and running yet. On this day, I am getting a tower; but I need a monitor still. I thought maybe I could have tried to learn this terminal/shell stuff before Linux is installed, but I probably need to install it first to get it entirely, right? See how much I know?

hmm... well, you might want to file this away:

log in as root
pico /etc/inittab
--scroll down just a little
--change the default runlevel from 3 to 4

--that gets you a graphical login as default... otherwise you need to login and use 'startx' (the horror!)

but kudos to you for choosing slack, and taking initiave... so many people choose linux because it isn't windows, but they so badly want it to be, and have no desire to learn anything about linux... they just want to point and click, and whine that things don't work the same way...

Ok so, If I have Started Konsole (yes, I know this program from using Knoppix)What is the command I use to Install a .tar.gz file?

a few commands...
1) tar -zxvf somefile.tar.gz
-- extracts *hopefully* to its own directory
2) cd the_new_directory
3) ./configure
4) make
5) make install

-- make install must be run as root... so prior to running make install, you must issue the command 'su' --short for 'switch user'... given with no paramaters, it defaults to 'su root' and prompts you for the root user password. assuming you login fine, you can then issue 'make install'

edit:
more common archive types:
tar -xvf somefile.tar
tar -jxvf somefile.tar.bz2

it is good to get into the habit of reading A LOT... people write things for a purpose, not just because they can... source trees usually include the files README or INSTALL, and you should read those... often there is a docs folder or similar.

to read those files from the console, use the command
less README

Thanks for all your help, guys. Soon as I get a monitor, I'm installing my distro and winging it... I know a bit more now as I made notes about the commands. (Yes, I have a notebook to log everything new I learn while operating Linux)

If you're running a newer version of tar (such as that with Slackware 10.1), it can automatically detect the compression type of the archive. The z and j options are no longer necessary.

e.g.

tar -xf (or xvf if you want a list of all the files being uncompressed).

Oh and one more thing...what about .rpm's? Do they install themselves, or is there a command needed for those as well?

ignore those for now, in favor of installpkg somefile.tgz

thanx cathectic... hadn't noticed