Mandrake Linkux 8.0 Newbie Running under KDE (Please help Me)

[Jonathan Powell]

(Warning: My Keyboard is shoot so beware of missing letters is sentences. lol)

:confused:

Hello

Can someone please help me I just bought Mandrake 8.0, I have never used Any type of linux befor and I need all the help I can get.

I have bben Using Windows for 8 years now and Linux is a lot differnt as you all-ready no, and with windows I am use to the following when I get on line and download a program it has a install.exe shield and all I have to do is click it and it starts the installiation of the program.

But with linux it's way harder i Just downloaded a game that sounds reall cool it is called blackpenguin-0.2.tar.gz and I have no idea of how to install it if it was windows it would probley be called blackpenguin.exe and all i would have to do would be to double click it and it would start setup, but this is not the case.

Some man in a ChatRoom said I have to use a terminal window and type commands in to install it this sounds hard, I really won't to learn how to use linux but I need yawls help.

Cause I am tired of Gates holding me back from leting me do certain things I would like to do so if any one has any idea of what I am tring to say please I beg you please help me.

[dvdnut]

hey dont panic

firstly you need to browse the nhf's flying around this site as they give plenty help on installing apps

but with tar.gz's think of them as zip files

and to extract them to a dir you need to

tar zxvf filename.tar.gz
the tar is the unzipper of sorts and the zxvf (not sure on the exact commands) but they extract the files onto a subdir of the same name of the file

hth, not much but a start.

[bdg1983]

The Compiling Software NHF can certainly explain the process better than I can. Should be exactly what you need to get started. And remember to always read the README or INSTALL docs included in the tar.gz.

http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/compiling/softinstall.html

[ColdPack]

On a side note, Mandrake is based on .rpms.
If you see a program you'd like to download and you have the choice of one that ends in .tar.gz (or .tgz or .tar.bz2 or...) and one that ends with .rpm, go for that one as you're a newbie and it's much "easier" to install.
For example, if you downloaded blackpenguin-0.2-i386.rpm, then all you need to do, in a terminal, is type "rpm -Uvh blackpenguin-0.2-i386.rpm" and it will unpack it and install it.
Another note---> Mandrake 8 has the Software Manager. If you bought Mandrake 8, the manual will tell you how it works. It can take care of these installations for you without using a terminal!!!

So, get reading! :D