Installing software under Kubuntu ( was: need help installing firefox)

[Marcus]

Friday, July 7, 2006, 6:13:33 PM, you wrote:
> i downloaded firefox, extracted it into my home directory,
misha> where it created the firefox dir.

Under Linux many libraries are separately installed, as opposed to Windows where DLLs are in the setup packages. This is a good thing though. Instead of downloading apps manually, use a package manager.

Kubuntu seems to use "Adept". Personally, I still like "Synaptic". These are front ends to the "Apt" package manager. You still need to click the update button (which does apt-get update). Use search to find apps.

If you manually download a single app you may get stuck with dependencies. If you then install by force the wrong library versions to suit this one app, then you could wreck your system because those libs are incompatible with the rest of your system. So it's best to use a package manager. Managing software this way is much easier than under Windows. 

If you cannot find the app you need in the Ubuntu repositories, try Debian repositories (with caution, watch out for the package manager's warnings). If all else fails, then you can still build from source.


Marcus