Hi Everyone, I am sold to Linux. I just got my Fedora Core 4 installed and everything seems to work fine. Now that I want to upgrade/install new version of Firefox 1. How do I go about to do that? 2. What are the specific instructions/commands to perform the task? 3. What are the general instructions/command to install a software (and upgrade a software if it requires different procedure)? 4. To which directory should i save and install the new Firefox? Right now I just had one default directory created by FC4. Thanks a millions.

Fedora uses RPMs for software management. You can find loads of software at places like http://rpm.pbone.net/, http://rpmfind.net/, http://freshrpms.net/ etc. Just try and get the right one for your system. Many other websites offer "binaries" as well as source code for their software, to make things easy, try to stick to these RPMs until you get the hang of what's going on....then you can produce your own RPMs from source code. Another alternative (if you have a decent net connection) is to use apt-get or yum (http://freshrpms.net/apt/) which will help by downloading and installing any dependencies that may have to be set up as well in order to get certain software working.

Thanks a bunch for you helpful suggestion. I was able to find the firefox rpm on one of the sites you suggested. When I tried to install the rpm with the following command rpm -ivh firefox-1.5-0.fc4.i386.rpm the error message I received follows: file /usr/bin/firefox from install of firefox-1.5-0.fc4 conflicts with file from package firefox-1.0.4-4 Should I try to uninstall the older verson before installing the more recent one? PS. Firefox folks didnt give out instructions on how to install their software. What I received on their Linux installation bit was an one line instruction on how to decompress the gzip file. I am confused as to why the dont provide complete and appropriate instructions?

They don't provide instructions for installing the RPM as they didn't create it, for all they know it doesn't exist! The instructions would be for installing what you can download directly from their site. It would probably work on your system but it is normally easier to keep track of all your software if you stick to on package manager and way of installing. You were soooo close with your above command. If v1.0.4 was not installed it would probably have worked, what you want to do is an upgrade: # rpm -Uvh firefox-1.5-0.fc4.i386.rpm Good luck!

whoa, whoa, whoa! You're a great help, 3Dave! Thank you! I went through 3 textbooks and more than a day of wait, and finally...voila! Coming from the Windows world, I couldnt imagine how complex and frustrating such a simple task can be. And the textbooks that I read, all they tell you were how to install the OS and its package. However, I've learnt quite a bit and the experience was rewarding (after all the frustrations!!). Again, you're a great help. Thank you.

One of the most useful commands for a newbie is "man" which displays the manual page for the command or file your are interested in, eg: $ man rpm brings up the manual page for the rpm command, It may be a little long but I'm sure the "-U" upgrade option is in there somewhere! Sometimes there may be an info page which can sometimes be a little more in depth: $ info rpm You can use man to find out the syntax of config files etc too, eg: $ man smb.conf will tell you everything you need to know to edit your samba configuration to connect to a windoze network. Sometimes you just want a little info on a command rather than reading a whole manual, in which case most apps use the "--help" switch, eg: $ rpm --help brings up a briefer description of usage. Then again other times you may want to delve right into a subject, check out the linux documentation project (www.tldp.org), especially the HOWTOs. In fact you'll probably find a lot of docs and HOWTOs already on your computer, look under /usr/share/doc.... These days you can often just double-click on an RPM to install it, but the fact that you are learning the command line is good....it means that you'll be able to do more with different distros as well as being able to fix your X server if it breaks!

Great suggestion, Dave. I read about the man command and tried it out but, admittedly, it was difficult to digest with the overwhelming load of information man gave. I guess I havent shred myself off the typical Windows' "why not just a click" attitude. For the past two days, I was able to -upgrade to Firefox 1.5 -installed a working version of Yahoo Messenger (that's important, given that most of my friends are YIM freaks) -installed Macromedia flash and a host of other browser plugins. -reconfigure KDE (that thing looks hella pretty!) -installed Opera 8.51 but I am still unable to... -getting my MP3 songs to work (looking at MPlayer right now) -unable to get my Yahoo Voice/Webcam chat going (looking at gyachE Media package). I guess it doesnt really help that I am using Mirco Webcam instead of Logitech). -unable to use yum (or even know how to install yum or whether yum is already installed) -and of course a million more things that I am not aware of or failed to mention... Oh yeah, I just built a virtual environment on my WinXP box to virtualize FC4 so I can excel in linux. Everything works well (except slower and internet connection was a real pain) even when failed to have VMware Tools installed. But for now, it's linux time and you have been a great help. If there's anything you can help or suggest, I am all ear! :-)