Basic Installation, Suse Linux 10.1 Options

[enyatara]

Help please someone. Have been a windows user for a long time. Now have suse linux 10.1 on 2nd hd. Here need a little help please. Sound is not correct but have a tar file, vision also not right also have a tar file. cannot get on line also have a tar for this. My problem is have read through suse help and no instructions on how to install a new program other than from set-up disc. Have read through newbies in this forum and when open consule and type what here suggests does not work as every time get file does not exist. Can anyone help please and be basic if given info please say where I I must go as all is new and I am not a programmer, just a little user.

[g33k]

Help please someone. Have been a windows user for a long time. Now have suse linux 10.1 on 2nd hd. Here need a little help please. Sound is not correct but have a tar file, vision also not right also have a tar file. cannot get on line also have a tar for this. My problem is have read through suse help and no instructions on how to install a new program other than from set-up disc.

If you've got a tar.gz (tar-gzipped file) of a program then mostly its the source code of that program. You need to compile and then build that program. Here are the steps to do that :

Open up terminal. FIrst go to the folder you have your tar.gz file. Then extract files from the tar.gz archive :

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tar -xvzf <program name>.tar.gz

if its tar.bz2 then try

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tar -xvjf <program name>.tar.bz2

Then you can navigate to the program directory..

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cd <program name>

Now do the following steps :

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./configure   # this will configure the program to compile in your machine
make           # this compiles the software

To install the program you need to be root.

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su                # become a superuser (root)
<enter root password>

Then just install the program by

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make install

After that you may choose to delete the source directory by

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cd ..
rm -r <prog name>  # recursively removes all the files in the directory

If you've got a RPM file then you can easily install it by

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su    # become root again
<enter root password>

rpm -ivh <package name>.rpm   # installs new package
rpm -Uvh <package name>.rpm # if you are upgrading a package already existing

If you get some dependancy error (package missing) in any of the above steps just note the package name and search for it in Yast or http://rpm.pbone.net or do a simple google search and install it..

Please have a look at http://www.faqs.org/contrib/yal/page7faq.htm