[K12OSN] software installation

[Les Mikesell]

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 09:10, Scott Pineau wrote:
> I just installed K12LTSP and am wondering how to install other
> applications.  Linux is totally new to me and I can't figure it out. 
> Lets say I downloaded Netscape and want to install that on the server
> what do I do.  Sorry I am a Windows guy.

First, check to see if the package you want is already part of the
k12ltsp distribution.  If it is, all you have to do is:
yum install packagename
and it will be downloaded from the internet repository along with any
needed dependencies.

If not, there are several 3rd party repositories that you can add
to your yum.conf.  There is some change of getting a conflict in
dependencies when you do this so it is best not to add more than
one.

Using yum to install not only automatically get any needed dependencies
but it means that a subsequent 'yum update' will pull in updated
versions as they appear in the repositories.

The next choice would be to find an RPM-packaged version matching the
fedora base of your k12ltsp version.  You can find these at
www.rpmfind.net, with a google search, or through links at the
home/download page for the project in question.  You can install
those with 'rpm -Uhv packagename.rpm'.  Sometimes you will have to
install other packages to make them work, and you have to track and
install updated versions yourself.

The final alternative is to download the source and compile it yourself.
Normally you would only do this if no one has already packaged the
version you want or you plan to customize it yourself.  The usual
procedure is to download a gzipped tar archive, unpack it with
tar -zxvf filename
then cd into the directory it creates and
./configure
make
make install (this has to be done as root)
but be sure you read the README and INSTALL files so you know what to
expect.  Programs you build yourself generally land under /usr/local/
while packaged ones will live in /bin or /usr/bin and have their
configuration files under /etc/, but this is not always the case.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com