newbie wants programs needs help

[brotherturtle]

I need a little help. I just installed red hat 9 and installation went smoothly. This is my first try with linux and I need help. I found some programs that I would like to take advantage of. However I do not know how to install them. I downloaded the TAR's and extracted the contents but now I'm stuck. The help guides for the programs tell me to type "make install" yadda yadda but where do I type this and is there an easier way?
Thanks in advance for your helping this clueless newbie.

[q6z4k]

Well, the tar archive is source code. I suggest you to search for the packages, that ends with *.rpm. They are very easy to install. As for the source packages, you will need to compile them. To do this, cd to extracted directory and type into console as root:

./configure
make
make install

But compiling will take time. If you are in KDE, just hit F4 to open console.

[DaMaster_Archit]

hello,

I am a newbie too, and I am facing this problem too. Everytime I enter the " make" command it says that make is not guilty because the command doesnt have the right parameters.
I get this everytime I try to install a program, I followed up the installations exactly!
First, I do the configure command, which takes only a few seconds (?) and after that, I enter " make" but I get this error...

does someone know why this could be?
thanks in advance!
DMA

[m3rlin]

after you ./configure, you MUST BECOME ROOT, so that you can have previleges to install the program

[serz]

Actually, you must become root only to execute "make install", use "su" for that.

[timothykaine]

I need a little help. I just installed red hat 9 and installation went smoothly. This is my first try with linux and I need help. I found some programs that I would like to take advantage of. However I do not know how to install them. I downloaded the TAR's and extracted the contents but now I'm stuck. The help guides for the programs tell me to type "make install" yadda yadda but where do I type this and is there an easier way?
Thanks in advance for your helping this clueless newbie.

Id strongly suggest using a distribution that is current and far more newbie-friendly. Youre not going to be able to get a lot of recent dependencies for a lot of programs, and if you were running something current there would be easy binaries to install.

If youre comfortable with Red Hat and dont want anything easier but just want something current to make it easier to get current software, get the latest "home version", Fedora. http://fedora.redhat.com/

[Parcival]

Youre not going to be able to get a lot of recent dependencies for a lot of programs, and if you were running something current there would be easy binaries to install.

In addition, I'd just like to say once more: newbies, before you try to install any program you manually downloaded from the internet, fire up the tool in your distribution first that handles the distribution's software. Chances are high the program is featured there, too, so you can install it at the click of a mouse button.

Example: you can download and compile FreeCiv from the FreeCiv website (that's the hard way) or fire up Synaptic (in Debian) or YaST (in SuSE), search for the FreeCiv package, check the box next to it and click install.

Pretty much the only time you need to compile software yourself is when

• for some reason you absolutely need the latest version of the program than the current one featured in your distribution
• for some reason you absolutely need an older version of the program than the current one featured in your distribution
• your program is so rarely used nobody has made a binary package yet
• you do this for optimization (Gentoo)
• you do this for fun

[ehawk]

I would suggest upgrading to fedora instead of sticking with red hat 9. Get the fedora core 4 installation CD and use it to upgrade. Then research how to use yum via google and

man yum

Since the advent of modern package management systems, you only fall back to binaries and tarballs if (first) a yum repository with your package can't be found and (second) an rpm file can't be found.

[Sepero]

Read My Signature
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

[brotherturtle]

Thanks for they help guys I will probably try Downloading fedora. Also Is Mandriva any good for newbies?

[Parcival]

Thanks for they help guys I will probably try Downloading fedora. Also Is Mandriva any good for newbies?

Yes, it is. Check out the ISO-Confused section of this board to get an idea of the various newbie friendly distros out there.

[brotherturtle]

Hey guys thanks for all your help. I downloaded Mandriva and had roughly the same issues. Then a friend at work handed me a Ubuntu install disc. I love it Ubuntu is perfect for me and probably any newbie. Go Ubuntu