Installing Software

You will probably want to add further software to your Linux system from time to time. The most common forms of packaged software for Fedora and many other Linux distros are:

*.rpm files

Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) files. These are installed and managed with the programs rpm (manually) and up2date (automatically).

*.tar.gz files, *.tar.Z files, and *.tar.bz2 files

Compressed tar files. They are packaged with tar and compressed with gzip (.gz), compress (.Z), or bzip2 (.bz2).

Most new software must be installed by the superuser, so you’ll need to run the su command (or equivalent) before installation. For example:

$ su -l
Password: ********
# rpm -ivh mypackage.rpm
...etc...

To locate new software, check your Linux CD-ROMs or visit fine sites like these:

http://freshmeat.net/
http://freshrpms.net/
http://rpmfind.net/
http://sourceforge.net/

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