first time install

[David Pilz]

I am about to install linux for the first time, and am having a few
problems: what are the symbolic links for? what do they do? They are not
being downloaded to my computer when I download the packages. Do I need
them? Also, the file sizes specified for the packages are relatively
small - 3 Kb, 4 Kb, etc., but when I download the packages they turn out
to be larger - 3 Mb, 4 Mb, and devel was about 150 Mb. Why is this? Any
help would be appreciated.