i guess I'm the newest n00b. here are my first questions:

[jamesey]

how do I extract .tar files?
and what are .rpm and bz2 files?

I'm trying to install Gaim. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

-James

[Ismahel]

TAR(1) TAR(1)

NAME[B]
tar - The GNU version of the tar archiving utility

...
[B]EXAMPLES
tar -xvvf foo.tar
extract foo.tar



You will have to check in the man pages, for tar, just type man tar

rpm are packages for Red Hat

and bz2 is a compression type. If you get a .tar.bz2 you can extract the files from it by doing tar -jxvf file.tar.bz2 . Make sure you have bzip2 installed.

[jamesey]

thanks man!

[Ismahel]

No trouble, we're here for that. ;)

[Dark Ninja]

RPM files can also be used under Mandrake. They are usually the way to go with installation (I know I'm going to be killed for that) - because they make things EASY. Easy, for most people, is good. Compiling the source *usually* isn't too bad, though (which is usually what .tar files are).

Anyway, read up on it. Welcome to the world of Linux.


Dark Ninja

[Nekopa]

And from another newbie.....

Tar files are actually just all the program files put together into one big file.

EG: Say you write 5 term papers and want to send them to your teacher, instead of emailing him 5 files, you can make a tarball (as it is called in Linux terms) and turn all five files into one big file. Then you just email the one file to your teacher, and on his end, he un-tar the big file (tar -xvf foo.tar) and all five seperate files come out of it.

RPMs, on the other hand, do the same lind of thing, except an RPM carries with it information as to where each file should go, and what other files need to be copied to your computer as well. Kinda like a setup.exe in windows. If you are just starting out in Linux, try to use RPMs if you can, as they *can* simplify installing programs. But eventually you will want to learn about tars and compiling and other good stuff :D

Oh and b2z or whatever is just a compressed file, similar to .zip files in windows :)

And by the way, man is short for manual. If you type "man <command>" in a text terminal, a set of pages will come up and show you information about how to use the command, and what options you can use with the command. Also if you type "<command> --help" you will also get some information about the command.

Good luck and welcome to Linux :D

Lee

[ 05 October 2001: Message edited by: Nekopa ]