for software, alot of its in the .rpm format. just use any graphical packege manager available under mandrake and it should go. for files suck as src.rpm type the commands into the console
rpmbuild --rebuild blah.src.rpm
or if that doens't work /*like it tells you invalid command, remember you do have to be root to do this*/
try
rpm --rebuild blah.src.rpm
and from a tarball
it will either be .tgz .tar.gz or tar.bz2
to uncompress from the console
type
tar -jxvf blah.tar.bz2
or
tar -zxvf blah.tar.gz
or
tar -zxvf blah.tgz
/*note the file extensions and the commands*/
and when the tar ball is uncompressed goto the directory
like
cd blah
then type
./configure --help
and look for any options that sound like they apply to you, if you are confused try reading the readme
then run
./configure
when its done
type
make
that should take a while. after its done compileing the software without errors note, a make error normally looks like this
*** error
or any gruop of stars and it stoping erroring out
after that sucess
type
make install
and you should be able to go
however if it install libary's or stuff like that
a good old
ldconfig
will help a bit with that
as for the winmodem, i haven't had to mess with modems under unix, just ethernet
i hope this was helpful just ask if you need to know more
