I could use a hand since I am very unfamiliar with the consol, I know where it is at least but thats about it... I also need help stting up a home network, I have 3 puters on a home network and the Linux box is on the net and surfing using netscape but I cannot get my windows boxes to see the Linux and vice versa, thanks

Usually to install a program you would
$ cd to where you downloaded the package
$ tar xfvz xxxxxx.tar.gz
$ cd xxxxxx(the directory the previous step just created)
$ ./bootstrap (Do this step if you downloaded the package as CVS)
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check (this is optional)
$ make install (this step must be done as root so do "su root")

Usually the program will be available as a binary package (*.bin, *.rpm, *.deb)

For these at the prompt I do
$ ./packagename.bin
or
$ rpm -i packagename.rpm
However I'm not sure about the *.deb packages.

Most distributions have support for rpms.

You should also check the INSTALL file that is included with the package. It will have more details on how to install it.

That's it.

For home-networking see the Home-Network-mini-howto available from h**p://www.coastnet.com/~pramsey/linux/homenet.html

Actually if you download from cvs you do ./autogen.sh usually first :)

Oh yeah. :o I forgot that step.