Mistake installing programs? -Beginner-

[Giulio Sorrentino]

Bradley (FC2 List) wrote:

>I think I may have made a mistake installing some programs.
>Not knowing that some programs were available and should be installed from
>Add/Remove Applications, I installed some programs with targz files. I put
>them in a folder, home/user/downloads/ and installed from there.
>  Does this mean that they are running from there and are in the wrong
>place, or do they install themselves in the proper directories?
>I am trying to install development tools so I can have gdesklets but can't
>do that now because some apps are missing even though yum says they are
>installed. The programs that  Add/Remove Appilcations can't find are
>cyrus-sasl, libuser, and xorg-x11-libs.
>
>Also, I keep getting errors to adjust my PKG_CONFIG_PATH but can't seem to
>find it. Can someone tell me where to look? I'm not really sure what it is.
>
>Thanks for the help.
>
>b
>  
>
On most linux you have 3 modes for install programs:

1. Sources: this is the most difficult method but the most flexible; it 
permit to optimize binary code for your processor. Tipically the sources 
are compressed in tarball (.tar), gzball (.gz) etc.
Once decompressed you need to compile ed install it.
Most of them have a series of script that make it more simply. To 
compile from sources you have to do:
a. Run the configure script: it check that your system has all the 
necessary (library, headers, compiler etc) for compile the program.
b. Run the make program with no options: it will compile the program.
c. Run the make program with the install option: it will copy the binary 
files to the destinations directory (it will install the program 
somewere on your box).
There are some GUIs such as kconfigure or kcomain that permit you to do 
all with some clicks.

2. Binary tarball: some programmers give even a tarball with only binary 
files: you simply need to extract somewhere ed run the program.

3. Binary installers: some distros (like debian, fedora and mandrake) 
include a specify installation program that manage a specify type of 
"tarball" (like .rpm or .deb). You simply need to get it and run the 
installation program (on rpm distros it's tipically rpm -ivh).
The rpm installer is only command lines, and when it doesn't find a 
library (dependencies) it doesn't install the program (it happens often).
There are meny frontends that try to resolve dependencies automatically, 
such as yum or apt.
There are may gui for rpm and frontends, such as kpackage, 
system-config-packages (Add/Remove Applications), yumi, gyum, synaptic.

If you have installed some programs from sources, you simply have to 
find the same version rpm and install it (it will automatically 
overwrite all files).