How do I install programs in Mandrake?

[rogue1979]

I am an extreme rookie in Linux. I installed Mandrake 8.2 on my laptop and was extremely lucky. Everything works perfectly, no thanks to me. I just let it do it's thing because I sure didn't know what to do.

So far I have gotten online (yippee!), can play CD and MP3 music, change backgrounds, screensavers and change the desktop settings. I have figured out how to make directories, enable internet connection sharing, and download files. I barely know how to get to the command line, and have absolutely no idea how or what to do with a tar or rpm thingy.

I have downloaded Firebird and Jre 1.4, can someone please tell me how to install them. Don't assume that I know anything because I don't, I only got this far because the KDE GUI did it for me. Any instructions have to spell out each step by the keyboard and mouse click, I don't know where anything is or what it does. Google gets me precise instructions that contain directions I can't even come close to comprehending. Thanks in advance. In spite of my ignorance, I really like Mandrake so far, I can tell it is much more powerful and flexible than any Windblows, too bad I can't do anything with it!

 

[rogue1979]

I read the entry in FAQ and it looked like chinese to me!!!! I couldn't fathom what they were talking about even though to looked like it should be easy.

 

[Twista]

got damn! Are you the teenage son in your pc spec page? Your family got some good computers and even the 8 yr old son pc is better than mine and even the moms lol and the 12yr old! Nice and sorry for no linux help hehe.

 

[rogue1979]

I'm the Dad, been playing with my laptop lately, hardly have time to fire up my gaming rig!

 

[Bladesonfire]

Firebird is easy: Just unzip it and run MozillaFirebird in the directory. I'm not sure how to create an icon for it on Mandrake, since I'm using Slackware/Dropline-Gnome, but what I did was create the icon and under command, I put "/home/bladesonfire/MozillaFirebird/MozillaFirebird", which is the path to the executable.

As for java, haven't installed it.

dave

 

[civad]

Java Plugin installation instructions

JRE installation instructions
HTH

According to installation instructions on mozdev.org, "On Linux, Sun's Java Runtime Environment does not work with builds of Mozilla that have been compiled with version 3.x of gcc. People using such builds need to use the gcc 3.2.1 build of the Blackdown Java Runtime Environment."


Link (mozdev)

Blackdown (download mirrors)
---Civ