where to download software?

Heh take your choice, it is all over the place.

One of the largest sites around though is sourceforge.net

Hope you have a few years to browse through the projects there, just remember they are constantly under devlopment.

Seablade

what kind of software do you need? Most linux distros have their own "package management" software for keeping track of what software you have installed. RedHat 9 is a distro where most everything you need is included on the CD, so you can look through their stuff for the programs you need. However, I highly suggest you look for a newer distro. You can continue with the Red Hat line, and try Fedora Core 3. FC3 has "yum", which lets you download a list of software that's custom made for FC3. Or, you can try something new, such as Suse (which uses "yapt", I think), Slackware (which uses "swaret"), or if you're really brave, Gentoo, which ironically has the easiest to use package management software possible (emerge openoffice gives you the latest openoffice).

If you want to install the programs from sourceforge, first you need to extract it. Run
tar -xvzf <packagename>.tar.gz if the file is a gzip, or
tar -xvjf <packagename>.tar.bz2 if the file is a bzip2 file. Then go into the folder it extract, and look for the INSTALL file. That should explain how to install it. In general, all you have to do is "./configure && make", then switch to root user, then run "make install". To run the program, just type the program name, and you should be able to run it. Good luck with linux!

A good place to get distros is linuxiso.org

Check out Gaim's website. they have RPMs for gaim. I run it my self. If I remember the RPM command it's rpm -Uvh <package name> you will either need to be su or root either one.

Well really the best way to learn linux is to dive headfirst and ask questions as you come across them, on a real quick detour...

Suse uses APT as well as RPMs? Dang I never even knew that the entire time I used it, and apt is the single reason that Debian is starting to win me over(Then again I also run DeMUdi which is kinda specialized)

Ok going back to your questions... Movie Player I use xine myself, and most players out there that people use are based off the Xine library. Gaim is on Sourceforge, Cine I dont think is but it might be, try googleing for it I cant rememebr the website right off hand. Burn CDs and DVDs I would try out k3B, even if you dont run KDE it is still kinda a common easy to use interface to the command line cdrecord and similar.

To install software, it will get tricky and depends on your distro. Certain distros use RPMs(Distro being short for distribution) RPMs can be downloaded and installed, but they will not install unless all the dependancies are met, which unless you run one of the large distros, typically it will mean more searching and downloading. RPM stands for Red-Hat package manager.

Another method is to compile and install the software yourself, I believe you will need to do this for xine. If you dont already have gcc installed on your computer, you will need it running linux. Most distros come with it installed but I have managed to find a couple that actually remove it(It is required to build the system so it actually has to be removed once the distro is built). The ones that dont have it installed are realitvely rare though. Compiling the software yourself typically involves three steps on the command line

>./configure (Needs to be run in the directory the source is unpacked in along with the rest of these)
>make all
>make install

It will take some time as you are compiling all the source code and some larger projects take almost an hour to do, however when you really get used to things compiling can allow you to customize softare for your specific needs.

The last and easiest method is on certain distros, namely debian, and is called apt. It gets some getting used to, but it will automatcily find any dependancies that you need to resolve and download and install those as well as automaticly downloading and installing the software you want. By far the easiest method, the thing to remember will be the sources file which you will need to add sites for it to search fopr the software, debian installations tend to already have three standard sites on there though so that should get you started, more can be added as you find them on the web(Certain software will have their own sites etc)

Feel free to ask more questions as you go along, if Suse is in fact able to use apt, it definitly just got my vote for best and easiest distro for new people to learn on. I know it can do RPM.

Seablade

I like Debian. Thank goodness for apt-get and dselect. If you find out what the Redhat equilvalent is (which I believe is RPM) then you'll be set. Good luck.

If you're running a distro w/a package manager (which you are), you don't want to compile/install too many of your own apps by circumventing the PM. This will lead to a lot of grief when removing/upgrading/replacing packages, etc. For redhat, a RPM-based distro, http://rpmfind.net/ is always a good site to visit. In the old days, redhat used to have their own repository of software also, but I don't know if that is true nowadays.

Leave the 'compile; make; make install' cycle for niche software that does not have packages for your distro.

Regards,

zakaluka2.

If your installing from source, I recommend the program stow. It makes it easy to uninstall things and keeps your partition neat.

This is the kind of stuff you need under slackware since I usually install most programs from source under slack. Redhat, I dunno, lots of programs come in rpm format.