Installing new software from the command line can be troublesome. With certain Linux distributions you get a tool called 'yum' preinstalled. YUM is an application deployment tool.

Lets look at installing tcpdump, a packet analysis tool using YUM.

'yum install tcpdump'
yum - the command
install - the function we are asking YUM to perform
tcpdump - the application

You can also use YUM to search for installed packages. If you're unsure of the yum package name, add a wildcard * - 'yum list tcp*'

[root@ryanpartington ~]# yum list tcp*
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
Installed Packages
tcp_wrappers.i386 7.6-40.2.1 installed
tcpdump.i386 14:3.9.4-8.1 installed

Cheers
Ryan Partington