Installing Applications

[Janet]

Im having trouble with two things. The first is installing applications either from a CD or downloads. This is embarrasing but Ive downloaded tried to tar -zxf (Package) and RPM -i (package) with alot of packages and I keep getting ex: cannot open, cannot be installed, doesnt look like tar, doesnt look like rpm, cannot open file no such file dir. Ive tried everything I can think of to open them. The files are there.
My second problem is the one package I opened sucessfully from a CD is Opera. I then downloaded the latest version but cant seem to get it on the left hand sidemenu bar. I can see in KDE there is the edit menu but how do you link it with the files.
Any help or a pointer to where I should be reading up on this greatly appreciated.

[Lindy]

Check the FAQ's at: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/faq/faqw.py?req=index .Section 6 is all about doing installations.

[ 10 March 2001: Message edited by: Lindy ]

[bdg1983]

What kind of packages are you trying to install?

RPM's (files ending with .rpm) can be installed like this:
rpm -ivh <package>.rpm
and upgraded with command:
rpm -Uvh <package>.rpm
You have to be root to do this.

Tarballs (files ending with .tar.gz) can be installed like this:
tar -xvzf <package>.tar.gz
That usually creates a directory named after the package, so just cd to that dir and read the README and INSTALL files in there. Usually they're installed like this (in that dir):
./configure
make
make install
You must be root when you do the make install.

There's more about this in the NHF (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/compiling/softinstall.html) so check that out.

[ 10 March 2001: Message edited by: NGene ]