ok. I know i asked this question before, but i didnt really get a full answer. I know you have to use the console to uncompress tar.gz files, when i do that (go to the dir. tar -[4 letters i can never remember] filename. A bunch of files unzip. Or i can click on the actual tar.gz in Nautlilus and it goes into the folder the was inside. Then what do I do? How do i actually install the software. Must warn: Very new to Linux!

in the command line do as follows... cd /directory/where/tar/is ls (notice files and directorys) tar -xvzf filename ls (there is a new directory with name similar to tar file) cd /file* (this is done because when you untar a file it creates a directory where all the uncompressed files go...you will see the new directory in an ls statement) ./compile make make install ...that shoudl be it....good luck

Not: ./compile but: ./configure G.

I always first tar -ztvf TheTarFile|less This lets me see where the files are going to be placed when I tar -zxvf. 99/100 times HippieJoe is correct. but there is always that 1%.

"this is done because when you untar a file it creates a directory where all the uncompressed files go...you will see the new directory in an ls statement" That isn't totally correct. The default is that the files are put back in the same path (relative to the current directory) that they were copied from. For example, if I issue a tar command: tar cvf mytarfile.tar directory1 then directory1 and all of it's contents will be tarred into the file mytarfile.tar. When you extract from mytarfile.tar, the files will be put back into the directory directory1 (tar will create the directory if necessary). But if the tarred files are not in a directory, they won't be put back in a directory. For example, if I issue the tar command: tar cvf mytarfile.tar *.txt then all of the .txt files in the current directory will be copied and when I untar, they will be put in the current directory. As Arnold suggested, it's good to do a 'tar tvf' command to view the listing of the tar file to see what's in it.

thanks for all the help.

What if the tar.gz file is on the CD (for example on an installation CD), and I want to install it? How do I path the directory to unzip it correctly and install? This may sound dumb but I'm a Linux newbie too.