Installing Software in Linux?

[surfernerd6987]

..

[AljoshaNL]

Have you looked in the menu or tried the command in the terminal?

[trickster]

Executable files rarely have extensions under linux. Thus, you will rarely if ever find .exe files. If the application does not show up on the application menu, try opening a command prompt and typing the name of the application there. If you provide more specific information, we might be better able to help you.
The command

rpm -ql myrpm.rpm

will show you all the installation details of the rpm file.
You might want to check out RPM Cheat Sheet

[axxis]

Usually, the install process will put an "executable" in your path somewhere. As you say, you don't always know what the name is but they are usually quite intuitive. I use the following techniques to keep track of my installs:

1. Command completion

The bash shell has the very neat command completion functionality where if you type the first few letters of a command in your path and then press the TAB key, it will autocomplete. So, if you installed XMMS, try typing xm[TAB] and it should autocomplete - xmms. This is useful if you don't know the exact name of the command.

2. Find command

Go to the directory (or as close as possible) where you think the software was installed and type

find . | grep -i xmms | more

and that'll give you a list of all the files with the name "xmms" in the subdirectories under your current location. From this its usually easy to find the exact install location. Then navigate to the directory and look for executables (ls -l will list files in the directory and the ones with "x" in the permissions are executables). In this case you would expect to find a file called xmms with the x bit set.

As always, with unix there are many ways of doing it and as you develop more tools and techniques you'll be able to find your way around easier. Stick with it!

James