Red Hat RPM's have an easy way to install new software. Software installed from an RPM package differs from compiling from source in a few ways, however, the most important one of all is the software is already compiled for you. All you are doing is extracting the binaries and copying them to their selected destination. RPM's files have a ".rpm" extenstion.

The good news about RPM's is installation of new software, and maintaining the software currently installed is easier than doing so for individual packages compiled from source.

The bad news about RPM's is that you don't have as much choices about where software is installed on your system, how it is compiled, and how it s configured.

Using the RPM system is very easy. To install a package, ENTER this command:

The -i flag is for "Install"
     Code: * filename.rpm is the name of the file that you want to extract.

NOTE: Make sure you are logged in as root to do this.