newbie question about tar files and eclipse installation

[Aisthesis]

i just got fedora up and running and am completely new to linux, so pls forgive me for some dumb questions to start out with.

i just installed java jre and jdk and am currently downloading eclipse as ide, which will be a big tar.gz file. in windows, i would typically just unzip the file in some innocuous location and then look around for an executable installer or a .exe file that runs the program immediately, inwhich case i just create a directory for the program and a shortcut to go onto the desktop. is that basically the way it's going to work in fedora, too?

in any case, the self-extraction for java jre and jdk was a little trickier using command line in fedora, at least following the sun/oracle instructions: i had to first make the bin file into an executable using chmod as root and then execute it from the directory where i wanted java installed.

anyhow, how do i proceed in fedora with the installation once i get the tar.gz for eclipse downloaded?

[markkuk]

Originally Posted by Aisthesis

anyhow, how do i proceed in fedora with the installation once i get the tar.gz for eclipse downloaded?

Delete the downloaded file, open the Add/Remove Software utility from the menu and use it to install the eclipse-jdt package.

[kurtdriver]

I don't know which program you refer to as eclipse, there are several by that name in the repositories, and their use is preferable to installing from source.
Type, as root, yum search eclipse .
If you find what you're looking for in that list, type, again as root;
yum install eclipse
Kurt

[Aisthesis]

i ended up doing it with add/remove software, which showed lots and lots of eclipse programs, then when i chose 2, also recognized the dependencies.

does yum do essentially the same thing?

in this case, just as an example, the one that seemed appropriate was something like fedora eclipse (comprehensive ide particularly useful for java). when i clicked apply in add/remove programs, it listed a bunch of dependencies and asked whether i wanted to install them, so i said yes of course.

had i used the yum method, would essentially the same thing have happened? like, supposing the exact name from the yum search eclipse output was eclipse-fedora-5.1 or something like that, then if i typed 'yum install eclipse-fedora-5.1' i'm guessing it would also check for dependencies and ask if i wanted to install them (?).

[kurtdriver]

Originally Posted by Aisthesis

does yum do essentially the same thing?

That's exactly what yum does, and in my experience, much faster. Use the -y option and just type the name of the program.
yum -y install eclipse

Yum's manual is a good read.
man yum