Quote Originally Posted by Bucky Ball
Hey guys:

I am pretty new here, but I have a question. I had an install of knoppix and windows set up and I trashed it all and did a reinstall due to worries about virii.

I am reinstalled and even have LILO working unlike before, but now I am confused by installs of programs that I download for knoppix/linux.

When I get tarballs of programs what steps _should_ I perform to untar and fully install any given program?
Anything that you download will usually end with .tar.gz (the same as .tgz) or .tar.bz (the same as tbz). First you must untar and unzip the app:

tar xzvf someapp.tar.gz

That will create a new directory usually named similarly to the app you downloaded for example:

someapp

Then you just do:

cd someapp

Fire up MC (enter mc at the command line) and you can see what's inside of the archive. Usually there is a README or INSTALL that will explain how to install that particular app. Of course you do realize that this is Debian and therefor apt-get is the primary way to get new apps installed.

For instance, I can't seem to get Moz. Firebird to "install" in the sense that the only way that I have to run it is to Bash to the directory that the files are in and do: ./MozillaFirebird
You can enter the full path instead of changing into the directory. I use Mozilla 5.1 so I do this:

/usr/local/mozilla/./mozilla

The thing is that I would like this instead:

I wish that I could either run that command line instance from any directory *and* I also wish that I could go into kde and run it just as I do when I click on the other internet listed apps under the K menu.

This is the type of thing that I don't know or understand.
It's been a while since I've used KDE but you should be able to create a shortcut w/ an icon that launches the full path of your application or create a menu item.