Installing GCC and other packages on Linux

[Luca Saiu]

  Please notice that this list is devoted to discuss the development 
*of* GCC, so it's not the right place to ask. If you have other 
questions you can write me at positron@gnu.org instead of using this 
address.

Justin Lundeen wrote:
Dear GCC Development Team,
   I am having a lot of difficulty following the installation 
instructions with GCC, and with every other Linux package I download off 
of GNU.org.
  Please use the term "GNU/Linux" when you refer to the whole operating 
system (see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html ); "Linux" is the 
name of the kernel, which is only a part, although important, of the 
operating system.
  The GNU Project only distributes software as source code. For 
executing or installing a program from source code you must first 
translate it into machine code (also called "binary" code) using a 
compiler, such as GCC; if you need more information about this see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code . When you have learnt the 
basics compiling a program becomes really quite simple, but GCC is 
particular in this sense: to compile GCC from the source code you first 
need a compiler, and this compiler must be *in machine code* to be 
executed on your machine.
  If you're a beginner I suggest you to start installing *binary* 
packages from your distribution CDs (and this is *essential* at least 
for GCC and binutils). You will be able to use the source code later, 
when you become a little more expert; don't be scared, it doesn't take 
very long.

What program do I run to enter cd? Terminal? I've tried that 
and I've even got so far as to get into the directories, but when I 
wanted to get into the directory where the config, makefile, and install 
files were at, it said invalid directory.
  It's right to use a terminal program (I suppose you are using KDE or 
Gnome) and cd, but I guess you haven't decompressed the archive. The 
right command for decompressing would be tar xvfz gcc-VERSION.tar.gz (or 
tar xvfj gcc-VERSION.tar.bz2 if you downloaded the bz2-compressed 
version); however by now I suggest you to just install binary packages: 
they're called RPMs in your distribution.

I would really appreciate 
detailed instructions (as detailed as you can get without taking up a 
lot of your time) to installing GCC and other applications.
  As the first thing you need a tutorial. The one I used is now aging, 
so I wouldn't advise it to you. I found this one referring to your 
distribution; give it a try:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/pdf/rhl-gsg-en-9.pdf
  (also this manual falls in the common mistake of using "Linux" as the 
name of the whole operating system, but it doesn't seem bad otherwise).
After you master the graphic programs of your distribution start 
learning the command line, and read the documentation.

  Write me if you have more problems.
  And if nobody has greeted you yet, welcome to free software 
community. I hope you're here to stay.

--
Luca Saiu, maintainer of GNU epsilon
http://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon