Newbie questions

[Burt Humburg]

Hi everyone. After much delay, I finally installed Linux on my Win98 box. Since then, I've 
login'ed, ls'ed, and su'ed more times than I care to think about. I've started to install software, 
but I have a few questions about where things need to go...

First question: When I install software in Win98, the GUI is stupid. So, to help it out, it updates 
the registry--such that if I later delete files without using the add/remove programs thing in 
"Settings", my computer might throw a fit. Is there any similar registry for Linux? Am I okay to 
simply rm -rf (or whatever recursive delete with subfolders is) the folder I mistakenly installed 
to if I want to reinstall?

Second question: Back in the old MS-DOS days, anytime you put some utility on your computer, you 
had to alter your PATH= line in autoexec.bat to get the computer to look in alternate directories 
for files. Linux has something similar. However, I'm wondering if there is a slick way of 
organizing structure in Linux. Something like a soft reference in /bin to some directory wherein 
you put all other soft references (maybe /opt/paths) such that anything you put in there will be 
checked when a program is requested to run.

On that note, is there a common place to install applicatons so all users can use them? I hestitate 
to install stuff in /home/bhumburg because it seems to me that only I will be able to use 
applications. Basically, could someone step me through how I should organize my file hierarchy.

Finally, I'm trying to setup a Java development environment. I've d/l'ed the files from 
blackdown.org, but they are vague in how to setup the soft references such that "java" is available 
anywhere. Do I reference /jdk/bin or what?

I think that's enough to start with. Anyone have any suggestions for online auctions where I could 
get a good non-Winmodem modem that's decently fast but also cheap?

Thanks!

BCH