I have had Linux for an hour. I was born and raised on Windows, so I am like a fish out of water on this thing.

After fiddling with basic things for 30 minuets, I decided to go get some programs. I downloaded LimeWire for Linux as well as 3ddesktop. Right now, there are 2 rpm files sitting in my home folder I have no idea what to do with. I know there is a command line, but I don't know how to use it. When I click on the rpm files, it just gives me an option to extract it, which I did. Now I have two rpm files and 2 white documents that read gibberish to me. How do I install stuff on Linux?

what distro?

if you have fedora, suse, mandrake...rpm based distro's, you can open a terminal (konsole, xterm) and type:

su
password
rpm -ivh <packagename>.rpm

and it *should* install for you...

I am using Ubuntu. If this is a bad distro for beginners, I dont mind switching.

Ok, here is what I have come up with so far. I downloaded 3ddesktop, an rpm file. RIght now, it is sitting in the "My Downloads" folder. I have opened it with archive manager, and I dont know where to go from there.

I followed the Read Me instructions on the main page, and it told me to hit...

tar zxvf 3ddesktop-x.y.z.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install

But it comes up with an error message, which reads as follows...

tar zxvf 3ddesktop-x.y.z.tar.gz
tar: 3ddesktop-x.y.z.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
root@cpe-24-174-165-252:/home/bobby # ./configure
bash: ./configure: No such file or directory
root@cpe-24-174-165-252:/home/bobby # make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
root@cpe-24-174-165-252:/home/bobby # make install

On the LimeWire file, I don't know where to begin.

when u open up the terminal you must cd (change directory) to the My Downloads folder or wherever you saved the file, first before running those commands.
open up the terminal and type or if that doesnt work try (although they should both do the same thing) including the quotes.. your My Downloads folder is in your home directory, right? after cd'ing to this downlaods folder, then proceed with the commands (ie ./configure, etc)

I get this error message

[edit] ah, second one worked

linux is case sensitive, which is why i typed My Downloads... type in the _exact_ name of the folder. My Downloads is different from my Downloads different from my downloads different from..... etc

One I am in the My Downloads directory, where do I go from there? I typed ./config, but nothing happened

did you extract the 3ddesktop file already? did it create a folder name 3ddesktop or something?

You have to untar a tarball package before you can do a make install on it.

I fyou have an RPM for your package, and your distro supports RPMs, installation is easier.

it's simply:

rpm -ivh packagename

from where the package resides. Of course you have to be root.

Most distros have a graphical package manager though. I don't know about Ubunto. Never used it.

yup, ubuntu uses synaptic

Same error message.

Forget 3ddesktop, lets move on to something simpler. Limewire. It is in the same place, and on the website, it says type...

but when I do that in the directory you gave me, it says...

did you download just that one .bin file? or did it come in some package and you extracted it?

have you tried using apt-get???

Ubuntu probably supports that.

When I extracted it, I got an SH file