Dave Gutteridge <dave at tokyocomedy.com> wrote: > This is one of those questions that seems to be soo obvious > to people that no one feels the need to have an explanation > anywhere. This is more of the "Windows deprogramming" I have probably mentioned before. Linux is a UNIX-like system, so there is a mindshift. It might help you if you get a basic UNIX/Linux book and read the first few chapters. I've been meaning to look at my local bookstore and find a good one, or even write a free one that is not too big, but goes over everything you should know to start. > I've been looking around the net for ages, and I can't > figure out what, on Linux, is actually a program. An "executable" in UNIX/Linux can be anything. The difference in UNIX/Linux is that you must _explicitly_ mark in the filesystem itself that a file is "executable." We don't trust our programs to tell us, as that is why Windows has so many trojan horses (as well as the fact that before Outlook 11 aka 2003, it used to trust and blindly send off any extension to the Windows executive). > I've downloaded OpenOffice 1.9 Beta, and would like to run > it. I go to the /opt/openoffice.org1.9.122/program/ > directory and... then what? What do I run to start the > thing? I've hunted around with ls, and I thought > bin files were the thing, but they don't seem to run. chmod u+x openoffice*.bin [ Change modal on openoffice*.bin files to execute for the user (owner) ] Now you can execute it: ./openoffice-(whatever).bin Note that unlike Windows, UNIX/Linux systems do not automatically search the current directory for an executable. That's why you must use the "./" in front of an executable if it is in the current directory. Either that, or add the current directory to your path (e.g., PATH=/usr/bin:.:/bin). > I'm trying to run the program, associate the program with > .ods files, and get some icons in my task bar. But I can't > do any of those if I don't know what is actually the > program. The OpenOffice.org installer should setup file associations in GNOME and KDE. -- Bryan J. Smith | Sent from Yahoo Mail mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org | (please excuse any http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ | missing headers)