[luau] Newbie Query - Browser Plugin?

[Eric Hattemer]

Ryan Kawailani Ozawa wrote:

>
>I'd love to use urpmi and RPM... if you can bear with me and explain exactly
>what that is!  Is it automated versioning or whatever like CVS?
>
>  
>

I take it maybe you're used to some unixy system?  RPMs are similar to 
windows installers.  Somebody takes the sourcecode, compiles it for a 
given linux distro, zips it up, then puts it into an rpm.  It is like a 
zip file with some extra scripting to handle upgrades and stuff.  An rpm 
will not work on a system drastically different from the one it was 
compiled for.  So you would look for mandrake 9 rpms (redhat 6.2 rpms 
probably won't work, as they rely on older libraries etc.). 

To deal with rpms, you must first find one.  Writers of certain programs 
make their own rpms, and mandrake keeps a big database of their own.  A 
mirror here at USC is 
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake/9.2/i586/Mandrake/ 
.  Out there, videl.ics.hawaii.edu doesn't seem to mirror mandrake 
anymore.  http://sluglug.ucsc.edu/macromedia/site_ucsc.html has the 
flash rpm.  just grab the download for mandrake.  Warren was talking 
about a thunderbird rpm from mandrake, but I can't find a firefox one.  
You can get firefox from Mandrake cooker (beta) at 
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake-devel/cooker/i586/Mandrake/RPMS2/mozilla-firefox-0.8-14mdk.i586.rpm 
.  So go ahead and download the mozilla-firefox*.rpm and the flash 
plugin rpm. 

Then you need to install those.  To do that, just open a terminal and type
rpm -Uvh mozilla-firefox*.rpm
rpm -Uvh flash*.rpm

And that's it in a nutshell.  For more information on rpm, type 'man 
rpm' or 'rpm --help'. 

As for urpmi, it automatically finds, downloads, and installs rpms for 
you.  Refer to http://urpmi.org for information.  Use their easyurpmi 
tool to add mirrors in your urpmi configuration.  You may want to add 
plf, since it has all the cool stuff with questionable licenses, such as 
gameboy emulators, windows media player codecs, cable descramblers, etci. 

-Eric Hattemer