The answer depends on what kind of package you downloaded. You can avoid many installation headaches if you download programs in the form of Red Hat binary packages *.rpm (that's the format I select if given a choice).

Installation of RedHat binary packages

If the program I want to install is a RedHat binary package (*.rpm), I can use either a command line, or a GUI utility. I like to use the command-line utility because it is fast and trouble-free. The RedHat package manager installation utility is called rpm . First I read the info on the package content (optional):

rpm -qpi my_new_file.rpm

This queries (mode "q", must be the first letter after the dash) the yet uninstalled package (option "p") so that it displays the info (option "i") which the package contains. If I want to install the program, I run (as root):

rpm -ihv my_new_file.rpm

The above command does the installation job. It runs rpm telling it to install the package (mode "i", must be the first letter after the dash) while printing to the screen more information than usual (option "h"=display "hashes" to show the unpacking progress, option "v" = be verbose). The contents of the package are distributed to the directories where they belong (rpm knows where they belong). After this installation, the program is ready to run, I just have to know the executable name and its location. If I have trouble finding the executable, this lists all the files that the package contains together with their destination directories:

rpm -qpl my_new_file.rpm

This queries (option "q") the yet uninstalled package (option"p") so that it displays the listing (option "l") of all the files the package contains.

The GUI front-ends to rpm are: gnopro (the old version, that comes with RH6.0 is confusing, but newer versions are much improved), kpackage (available only with the more recent distributions), and the old glint (very slow, comes with RH5.2).

Troubleshooting. rpm is supposed to be an intelligent software package manager. If the installation fails I read the error message and may be able to figure what to do:

Installation failed because I have an earlier version of the same package and the versions conflict. Solution: don't install, but "upgrade" the package.

rpm -Uvh my_new_file.rpm

Installation failed because another package is needed first. I have to find the missing package and install it first, and then retry the installation. In extreme cases, I may choose to ignore the missing dependencies (I really should know what I am doing here else the software may malfunction):

rpm -ivh --nodeps my_new_file.rpm

or perhaps even:

rmp -ivh --nodeps --force my_new_file.rpm

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