Being slightly familiar with BSD, I'm trying to get my feet wet with Linux, and was wondering if anyone can suggest a good walkthrough of setting up a CentOS server with Apache, PHP, and MySQL... I realize there are step-by-step guides of the sort "copy-this-line- paste-into-terminal-and-hit-enter", but I'd like to understand what's going on when I issue a single wget command and numerous packages and libraries start downloading.... Specifically: 1. Is there a "right" way to install software on Linux in general, an CentOS in particular? For example, the Package Manager on CentOS 5.2 allows you to install certain software, but often not the latest version. So if I go download MySQL 5.0.67 from the web, how do I install it and make it play nice with the rest of the system? Ditto for PHP 5.2.6. And once installed (either by the Package Manager -- and by the way, why are the apps it lists so out of date?), what's the best way to update PHP and MySQL? Is it simply a matter of downloading the binaries again and overwriting the existing install? On Mac OS X, such downloads come as .pkg files that seem to take care of so many details without requiring a trip to the command line. 2. Where should software, such as PHP, MySQL, Apache2, be installed? / usr/bin ? 3. Is it a bad idea to install some software from the command-line via wget, some software from the graphical Package Manager, and some software from the the web? What I mean is, so far it seems like Linux manages the list of installed packages, and I just wonder if I'm screwing things up this way. Anyway, sorry for the ramble, just looking for some guidance. Thanks. ...Rene