How do i install programs and updates?

[Vampirrella]

Ok, i know what your thinking.. another damn newbie.. please bear with me cuz i feel embarassed enough having to ask this:

I was able to get a retail version of mandrake 10 powerpack via a school teacher friend i have but it didnt come with any manuals, just the cds (i knew this beforehand) So after the very easy install and setup, i sit here at my desktop thinking "now what"

So i go about exploring around and notice the firefox is so outdated and proceed to go via the link shown to the mozilla page for an update. FF file for linux is there called Linux i686 english.

I d/l this to my home/tmp folder via somethign called ARK? some kind of d/l manager or something? Anyway so its all decompressed in that tmp folder. Now i am totally clueless as to how i run this update.

So i guess im not sure which file actually runs the updater. What should i look for?


EDIT: oops, i forgot to ask another thing:

In the internet section there is only an Xchat program. Ive been using google chat in windows. Isnt there some kind of chat program i can install in linux that will allow me to access the gmail.com server to still chat with friends that are on windows while i am in linux?

 

[nweaver]

What did you download from Firefox? Mandrake binarys, RPMs, .deb package, source, etc

Does google provide a linux client?

 

[TGS]

If you downloaded the source, or precompiled version it may have been in a .tgz(Tar Gunzip) file. To which I believe that you mean that you could view the file via ARK, an archiving tool.

See if you can grab a current rpm package, and use the rpm -e <old package name>, to uninstall. Then you should be able to install the newer version.

Info on having two versions installed. You can play it safe and install the second version, then get rid of the first. Either way as long as you are satisfied wtih the newer version, just make sure to get rid of the older version.