A question or two

[Guest Hat]

Alright, I'm using Mandrake 10 Community Edition with Gnome (this is the first Linux distro I've ever used, so pardon my ignorance in these topics). I used easy urpmi to set up my mirrors and have used the X interface for urpmi to install various packages (along with Mandrake Update to get various updates and such). My main question is, the rpms on the mirrors are out of date (although I'm not complaining, I imagine it would be very difficult to keep up with all the various updates to the thousands of programs out there) - I'm running Gaim 0.75 and Firefox 0.8 (along with various other programs). Now, I want to update the said programs (Gaim to 0.8 and Firefox to 0.9), but how would I do that and still maintain compatibility with urpmi? I mean, as far as urpmi is concerned, if I DO update it, the rpm still says I've still got the old version. Should I just uninstall the rpm and find a different rpm/compile from source?

[Ixthusdan]

Sometimes you have to install from tarballs or use the writer's install program. If it is not yet an rpm, that's your only choice. If it is an rpm, but not on the mirrors, download it and in a terminal type "urpmi /file/location/file.name.i586.rpm" Do this as root.

[Guest Hat]

Alright, I was just wondering if there was some other way that I was missing. Thanks for the input.

 

Also, quick question - Linux (or some program) randomly disabled multiple key presses when holding a key down (as in, I hold down "a" and it produces "aaaaaaaaaa....." until I let go). It's particularly annoying when I use backspace or scroll with the arrow keys. I looked in the settings for the keyboard (under Gnome's configuration), and it appeared to be activated, which leads me to believe something else is blocking it. Any ideas?