Newbie questions
Burt Humburg
bhumburg at kumc.edu
Thu Jan 13 04:10:02 CST 2000
Hi everyone. After much delay, I finally installed Linux on my Win98 box. Since then, I've
login'ed, ls'ed, and su'ed more times than I care to think about. I've started to install software,
but I have a few questions about where things need to go...
First question: When I install software in Win98, the GUI is stupid. So, to help it out, it updates
the registry--such that if I later delete files without using the add/remove programs thing in
"Settings", my computer might throw a fit. Is there any similar registry for Linux? Am I okay to
simply rm -rf (or whatever recursive delete with subfolders is) the folder I mistakenly installed
to if I want to reinstall?
Second question: Back in the old MS-DOS days, anytime you put some utility on your computer, you
had to alter your PATH= line in autoexec.bat to get the computer to look in alternate directories
for files. Linux has something similar. However, I'm wondering if there is a slick way of
organizing structure in Linux. Something like a soft reference in /bin to some directory wherein
you put all other soft references (maybe /opt/paths) such that anything you put in there will be
checked when a program is requested to run.
On that note, is there a common place to install applicatons so all users can use them? I hestitate
to install stuff in /home/bhumburg because it seems to me that only I will be able to use
applications. Basically, could someone step me through how I should organize my file hierarchy.
Finally, I'm trying to setup a Java development environment. I've d/l'ed the files from
blackdown.org, but they are vague in how to setup the soft references such that "java" is available
anywhere. Do I reference /jdk/bin or what?
I think that's enough to start with. Anyone have any suggestions for online auctions where I could
get a good non-Winmodem modem that's decently fast but also cheap?
Thanks!
BCH
More information about the Kclug
mailing list