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7 Miscellaneous There are two major classes of program packages: .rpm and .tar.gz
(or .tgz, .bz2, .gz) RPMs are precompiled, installation-ready packages. You
might prefer those, if you are new to Linux. RPMS in KDE are handled by kpackage
(it's in the 'Utilities' section). Open it and move around a bit. kpackage
is opened by default when you left click a RPM in the file manager.
To download them in Netscape, hold the <shift>button and left-click
the link (works for every other file, too). There is one obstacle, though:
if you aren't root, you can't use kpackage to install or uninstall rpms. There
are two ways to handle this, both involve opening a virtual terminal (click
on the icon with the two screens or hit <Ctrl>-t in the filemanager),
this is something like the DOS-window known from some lesser OS's. Type 'su'
to become root. Now you may a) fire up kpackage (type 'kpackage' at the prompt)
or b) install the rpms by hand. Some options are: rpm -i [Package_name]
: installs rpm -U [Package_name] : upgrades an installed package with a new
version rpm -r [Package_name] : uninstalls Adding the -vv option (e.g. rpm
-ivv) turns on verbose mode (useful if encountering errors). RPM keeps a
database about all installed programs, so you won't be able to accidentally
erase important programs or files which other programs rely on. Though be
aware that you are doing your installs as root: rpms from obscure sites may
be badly configured or even contain malicious content. Some common issues
with rpm: failed dependencies. rpm checks if the package you are about to
install has all the other packages installed that are required to run the
program properly. Alas it only does these checks against its own database.
So if you compiled and installed a prerequisite rpm won't find that and will
refuse to install. In this case you may either: Install the prerequisite
again via a rpm-package or tell rpm to ignore dependencies (option --nodeps
and the ultimate --force). Be careful with these options, though... checking
rpms without kpackage A pretty smooth way to get more information about a
rpm is using the 'midnight commander' ('mc'), which runs on console or in
a virtual terminal (e.g. kvt). mc allows you to browse a rpm just like a
directory and have a look at all installation scripts (besides: it also makes
a formidable file manager). 'install' or 'upgrade'? It is important to discriminate
these two. An example: You want to upgrade a library (that's a collection
of program routines) because you want to install a program that needs that
new version. But some of your programs depend on the old version. If you
now upgrade with rpm -U these programs perhaps won't work anymore. You may
now get all these programs in rpms that are compiled against the new version
of this library. Or you just use the -i switch. Most libraries can coexist
in different versions on one system. Common resources are:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/
and (preferably) its worldwide mirrors. Mandrake-Linux is compatible to RedHat-Linux.
Apart from the KDE-base rpm and system initialization stuff you may use original
RedHat packages. For Mandrake specific updates check Mandrake's FTP server
and its mirrors via Mandrake's main site at
http://www.linux-mandrake.com
Debian users can check out Havoc Pennington's
Debian tutorial 's
chapter 16 on dpkg and apt it's a bit old but still relevant Recommended reading: man rpm, rpm --help | more, RPM HOWTO, Software Building mini-HOWTO
Keyboard commands for for KDE
7.4 GNOME ( Nautilus)keyboard commands.
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