software installers

[James Livingston]

On Sun, 2005-07-17 at 11:28 -0300, Renato Henriques wrote:
> Help.  I am totally frustrated with Linux regarding this simple
> procedure, and I say simple thinking Windows or Mac os X. Just download
> a simple targz file, double click on it, unpack it and double click on
> the installer.  Is that so hard?  How come in Linux one has to suffer
> with the comand line feature that most of the time does not work?  I'm
> trying to install skype. Can anyone help me?

For a number of reasons, downloading pre-build software from websites
doesn't work that well under Linux. This is mostly due to the fact that
exactly what people have installed varies remarkably, and so creating
pre-build software that can be widely used is difficult.

In general you should try to install software via synaptic where
available, but for things such as Skype that doesn't work. Quite a bit
of pre-build software comes in either .deb or .rpm form which is easier
to install than a .tar.gz file.


In particular Skype has a .deb for Debian based distros (such as Ubuntu)
on their download page (http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-deb).
Once downloaded, you should be able to install it by running command
"sudo dpkg -i skype.deb" from a terminal. I believe that there is a gui
available for installing downloaded .deb files, but I can't can't
remember what it is called at the moment.


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston 
-- 
We all enter the world in the same way: naked... screaming... soaked in
blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn't have
to stop there.
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