General RPM question

["Michael Rich" <istan alltel net>]

I have a sort of general RPM question that I was wondering about.

What is usually the best method to do updates per say?  For instance, the
other day I was compiling FreeAMP, and it said I needed a newer version of
GTK, so I slid on over to RH website and pulled down a an updated RPM pack.
I then proceeded to try to install them with a command like:

rpm -U XXXXXX.rpm (don't remember the file name)

and it basically told me that there were dependencies on another package, so
I couldn't upgrade.  When I downloaded and tried to upgrade that other, it
basically told me it was dependant on that original one I was trying to
upgrade (circular references it appears).

Now what is the sort of accepted way to do updates like this?  I ended up
finding a switch to ignore dependencies, but that crap could come back to
haunt me one of these days since they are usually there to keep me from
doing something stupid.

Any suggestions/tips that could help an aspiring (hehe) Linux newbie?

Michael Rich
http://alphax86dev.cjb.net
http://www.cdx.sk/userwebs/zdrpg