Bill Thompson wrote:
I am interested in using Fedora 7. I am a computer USER. I do not have time to learn programming but I am willing to learn Fedora speak if I had access to an entry level guide to the terminology. I tried to use Fedora 6 it installed easily but I quickly became frustrated with my inability to understand the language and concepts for finding and adding applications.
Hi, I'd agree with most of what Anne Wilson said, although maybe you don't want to try to read /everything/ on the mailing list. I certainly don't. If you haven't already done so it may be worth setting up a filter to put all list mails into a folder, possibly do this on a webmail account like gmail which can then just absorb all those emails. Some specifics then. One fundamental difference between Linux distros and Windows is that distros are more than just the OS. A distro includes lots of applications compiled (built) to run on that particular flavour of Linux. This is done through the following system (the bits you want to deal with are probably towards the end): Packages. These are files which contain all the files needed by an application and the instructions to install, configure and uninstall them. In the RedHat world these are called RPMs. Some packages are note applications, but libraries. These provide components which can be shared by applications. An example is libvorbis, which is needed by most of the music applications to play Vorbis music files, but isn't an application by itself. Package management. There are two levels here. The first is the software responsible for dealing with individual packages (installing and removing). This first level does some basic checking, and unless instructed otherwise won't install or remove packages if they require packages you don't have or are required by other installed packages respectively. It is responsible for keeping track of what packages you have installed and where their components are. In RH world this is mainly handled by a program called rpm. Package management (update management). To make life simpler there is a second layer of package management, which is a little harder to describe. This revolves around repositories: which are online collections of packages. If you want to install a new application you tell the package manager (there are several, but Fedora's natural manager is Yum) what you want to install, it looks at the repositories and figures out what other packages you need. Then it downloads all the needed packages for and installs them. Similarly if you want to remove a package it works out what this will affect. It can also check whether there are newer versions of packages and update them if you want. In distros (Fedora, Debian/Ubuntu) the repository system is a very central component, used for both providing many more applications than are on the install discs and for rolling out updates. There are graphical tools to manage all this. On the desktop or file manager if you double click on an RPM you will be asked if you want to install it (and for the root/administrator password to do so). You can update and install applications using the repository system via the options in the Applications menu: 'Add/Remove Software' and 'System Tools|Software Updater'. Since FC6 it has been possible to configure your system to use extra repositories (such as Livna or Freshrpms) simply by installing a package (which you will have to download via your browser. It is wise to be careful if you want to use more than one of these at the same time though, as they may contain incompatible versions of the same thing. There is a lot more that can be done if you are willing to edit configuration files, and I haven't addressed installing applications outside the package framework, but the above is probably more than enough to absorb in one sitting. Hope this introduction to package management has been more useful than confusing. -- imalone
