What next?

[dave houk]

First off I will say I have many years of experience on windows based computers. However, now I have installed Mandrake 8.0 and am up and running with no problems. Even my cable modem and router were no hassle. So far I have surfed the net and made my desktop pretty by downloading some themes. But I want to install programs like Gimp and others. I can download the package, unzip the .tgz file, then I'm lost. I read things like "oh, just do./configure,make,make install". Do it where? Do it how? To a windows user, this is Chinese. First you need to compile it, after you install this library or that. How? Where can I find these commands and where do I type them? In a terminal, or run command? I need HELP.

[fancypiper]

Check the three very handy guides in my sig.

[dave houk]

Hey thanks, I'll check them out. Maybe there is hope for me.

Dave

[MlotPolska]

well, for starters you need to do a LOT of reading otherwise you will never learn...but to answer you question simply: you need to type "./configure" in the terminal(then press the enter key), once it's done with that type "make"(enter), and then type "make check" **as root !**...to do this without logging in and out type "su" at a command line, enter your password, and you're root. that should get you past those speed bumps, but don't forget to read !!! read read read, if you ever plan on suceeding the the wonderful world of linux !:D

good luck

[Timothy L. Miller]

Originally posted by MlotPolska
well, for starters you need to do a LOT of reading otherwise you will never learn...but to answer you question simply: you need to type "./configure" in the terminal(then press the enter key), once it's done with that type "make"(enter), and then type "make check" **as root !**...to do this without logging in and out type "su" at a command line, enter your password, and you're root. that should get you past those speed bumps, but don't forget to read !!! read read read, if you ever plan on suceeding the the wonderful world of linux !:D

good luck

I agree wholeheartedly. Read a LOT. A little thing I found that helped, is get a little blank notebook. When you run into a problem thay you find an answer for, right down exactly how to fix it. This way you create your own little man-page, that you can refer to. This has helped me out immensely, since I can read through things, just pull out the meat of the man and info, write it down, and have a quick lookup for common problems that I've run into.

[fancypiper]

:D Or redirect and to a file in my home directory :D

Save paper!

Another site that has some great stuff is the Living Linux (http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/ct/9) section on O'Reilly's site.

A way to get a grip is read the Linux and the Tools Philosophy. That really got me on the road to understanding this great os.

[dave houk]

Hey, thanks everyone for steering me in the right direction. I'm gonna go do some reading.

[hop-frog]

Do you have the Mandrake disks?

Gimp should be included in your set.

You can run `rpmdrake,' run a search for `gimp', click the box to the left of the package name, and hit the install button.

or from a terminal type:

su
(root password)
rpminst --files /mnt/cdrom/Mandrake/ RPMS/gimp-1.2.1-5mdk.i586.rpm

[dave houk]

Yes, I have Mandrake 8.0 discs. I will give that a try. I'm not doing very well the other way. I downloaded Gimp ,but then it said on the website that I needed to have GTK installed, so I found that. But then I read that I needed GCC 3.1 installed first, so I found that. I opened up terminal and went to GCC dir (hey, thats amazing that I could get there) typed the ./configure, things were happening, then it said something about setting" enviromental variables" for cc? Lost me on that.

[dave houk]

Hey, that rpmdrake works nice. I had no problems installing the program. Do all rpm's work like that?
Thanks for all the help!!

[hop-frog]

Originally posted by dave houk
Hey, that rpmdrake works nice. I had no problems installing the program. Do all rpm's work like that?
The rpms on the disk should work well.

You can find more packages at http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/

The rpms that have mdk in the filename work the best, but the others should work too without much difficulty.

You can use the `rpminst' command to install the packages that you download.

linuxconf, gnome-linuxconf, rpm, and gnorpm are some programs you might want to try out.