Problems extracting Lammp to /opt folder

[si70]

As a total newcomer to Linux, open source and really anything other than MS I am struggling a bit. Could anyone advise on a few things. First I am trying to install XAMMP on Linux Mandriva Spring 2009. Mandriva is running on Sun Virtual Machine over XP. Install instructions say to extract Laamp to /opt directory which I assume is the one in root. Everytime I try I get an error message about insufficient permissions. I have looked to edit these but cannot do this either. I also had a the same problem with Ubuntu which was a clean installation on independant harddrive. It is probably really simple to someone in the know. Any thoughts or advice greatly appreciated

[Nobbie]

From http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html#377

Step 2: Installation
After downloading simply type in the following commands:

1. Go to a Linux shell and login as the system administrator root:

su

2. Extract the downloaded archive file to /opt:

tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.2.tar.gz -C /opt

Did you really follow these instructions, especially the step 1 "su"-Command (in order to login as the system administrator root)?