This section contains information on common system administration tasks. It is by no means an exhaustive list of what goes on in Linux system administration but rather a collection of a few common tasks that a new user may find useful. If you would like more information on Linux system administration, refer to the online Linux System Administrators' Guide, found at http://www.tldp.org/LDP/gs/node6.html#chapsysadmnum.
As an Emacspeak user, you'll also want to know which applications are Emacspeak-enabled. These Emacspeak-enabled applications have a second special .el wrapper file that contains Emacspeak-specific commands that provide audio feedback just for that application. For a complete list of Emacspeak-enabled applications, see http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/applications.html. All avaliable emacspeak-*.el files are included with Emacspeak, so you won't have to download them.
So, when you install a new application, you'll need the following three things:
The application.
A .el file for that application, if you want to run it directly from Emacs instead of from the Emacs shell command line.
An emacspeak-*.el file for the application, if you want to run it directly from Emacs and have it Emacspeak-enabled. Check in the /emacspeak/lisp directory to see if one exists for your application.
Whenever possible, this HOWTO tells you specifically whether or not an application is Emacs-native, and if not, where to get the special .el wrapper files if they are available.
Once you've chosen a new application to install, you'll need to download it. Typically you'll use either FTP application or the wget application to download your new Linux application, since most of them are distributed only on the Internet. If you are unfamiliar with the FTP and wget applications, refer to, Downloading files, for information on how to use these applications to get your files.
Usually, the files you download will have some sort of extension (the letters after the "dot" or "period" in the file name) that denotes what type of file it is. If your file has a .gz or .tar extension, refer to Uncompressing files. If your file has a .rpm extension, refer to Installing RPMs.
If you ended up with a single file after uncompressing, it probably has either a .rpm extension or some other type of extension, such as .el. If it has a .rpm extension, refer to Installing RPMs. If the file has some other extension, refer to the website where you downloaded it for more information.
For additional information on RPMs, refer to Red Hat's official website, http://www.redhat.com or the official Red Hat Linux reference guide, at http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref guide/ch-rpm.html.