Installing and upgrading RPM packages

For installing a software package, you use the rpm command with -i option (which stands for "install"). For example, to install an RPM package called software-2.3.4.rpm:
# rpm -i software-2.3.4.rpm

If you already have some version installed on your system and want to upgrade it to the new version, you use -U option instead (which stands for "upgrade"). For example, if you have software-2.3.3.rpm installed and want to upgrade it:
# rpm -U software-2.3.4.rpm

If all goes well, the files in your package will get installed into your system and you can happily run your new program. But where is your new program? Note that rpm doesn't usually create a special directory for the software package's files. Instead, the different files from the package get placed into appropriate existing directories on your Linux system. Executable programs go usually into /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/X11/bin, or /usr/X11R6/bin after installing with rpm.

But how can you run your new program if you don't know where the executable is? Sometimes the program gets automatically added into your menu, but usually you can just run the program by typing its name at the command prompt. In most cases you don't have to know where the program was installed because you don't have to type the whole path when running the program, only the program's name is needed.