I am a novice linux user (I am 15). I have run mandrake, fedora core and suse in the past because i liked thier configuration tools but now I am using slackware. I know how to install programs using RPM but how do you install .tgz or .tar.gz files ? Do you have to extract or compile them or something because i have little programming experience at all.

I would like to know how i can insatll these programs as i want to run some games under slackware.

My system is PIII Ighz, 10/100 ethernet LAN card, pretty generic soundcard, 2mb shared trident graphics adaptor, 128m RAM, DVD drive and 25gb HDD.

Any help would be appreviated

To install most compressed apps you would run these steps:
1. gunzip filename.tar.gz
2. tar -xvf filename.tar
3. cd filename/
4. ./configure
5. make && make install

Now, this will work for most cases. However, you need to make sure that any required files / libraries are installed and visible. The install docs for the program in question should help with that.

Thanks so much i only posted this about an hour ago. I will try this rigth away. Also, do you like slackware? I find it very fast and stable but it lacks the ease of use of redhat or suse. I am a beginner to linux so do can you reccomend any distros that are easy to use?

It says i need mono - what is this

Mono is a .NET programming alternative for Linux.

http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

But, there are tons of distros out there. If you like the ease of use of RedHat or SuSE, why not stick with those until you are more comfortable? Those still offer you just as much "under the hood" as Slackware can, but they hold your hand more, which can often keep you from wrecking your system config.

Slackware uses the *.tgz packages (instead of RPM). You can install them with
You can download prebuild Slack packages from http://www.linuxpackages.net
As sfbell said, you have to take care for dependencies, since Slackware tools do not check the dependencies automatically.

If you want a more user-friendly distro, I'd recommend to try PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Ubuntu (take a look at http://distrowatch.com/).

Na,only slack works as ubuntu, RH, SUSE, MANDRIVA, PCLINUX etc... hate my graphics card, pc lan card, modem, and dvd and die at install or firstboot.

SLack is ok. Im not very experienced at linux but know windows well.

The best advice I can give is to start reading the information that the code package includes. Most tarballed (.tar.gz packages) code packages include an INSTALL file in the base folder. You should start by reading that, it will tell you how the developer intended the software to be installed. If you don't find an INSTALL file, you will most likely find a README file that includes the installation instructions. I recommend that you read the README file even if there is an INSTALL file since the README file usually contains more descriptive information that may be important to know.

Quick and easy to use distros are Mandriva and Ubuntu.

Mono is software that is similar to M$ .NET project.

See mono-project.com

I took your advice and am now running SuSE, thank you!
However, can anyone help me with a different suse peroblem?

I have a PIII laptop. With Win98 there is a "speedstep" thing where i can choose maximum performance (1ghz) or battery optimised (600/700 or so mhz0 and it changes rom one to the other on removal / insertation of the ac charger. I really need such a thing in linux as on 1ghz it gets REALLY hot.

I have tried scaling / cpufreq but apparently the Pentium III i have is like the the very first speedstep version and non compatible

untar the files :
if it's a .tar file then untar using the command "tar -xvf *.tar"
if it's a .tar.gz file then untar using the command "tar -xvfg *.tar.gz"

If you had downloaded a development kit then you need to run the following commands

After untarring run the following commands :
./configure
make
make install

Abhinav Shah