NEWBIE QUESTIONS

Bob Nielsen nielsen at oz.net
Thu May 12 02:41:46 UTC 2005


On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 18:08 -0700, Barry Martz wrote:
> Hi.  I'm a windows user so please excuse the dumb questions.
> 
> How do I download a program (package) and load it?
> 
> I am using Synaptic Package Manager for getting packages.
> 
>  What I want to know is
> if I find a program on the internet, do I have to save it to a certain
> file area to UNZIP it and run the
> Synaptic program? 
> 
> Do I have to use the text commands to open it? 
> 
> Are there programs I can't use with Ubuntu?
> 
> Here is an example, I am a ham radio operator and there is a
> packetcluster program called CLX.
> I went to the site, downloaded it to my desktop, and there I stand.  How
> do I take that program,
> unzip it and install it?  (am I windows or WHAT!)
> 
> Sorry for taking up time and space here but I really do want to learn
> and this is REALLY foriegn
> to me.

If you can't find the program you want in Ubuntu with 'apt-cache search
<something>', but you can find a source package somewhere on the
internet, you can still install it.  It will probably be a .tar.gz
or .tgz package (which really are the same thing, a gzipped tar archive.
Expand it with 'tar xvzf something.tgz' and it will put all the files
into a new directory.  Change to that directory and you will probably
find a README and an INSTALL file.  INSTALL will give directions telling
you what you need to do.  In a Debian-based system like Ubuntu, it is
probably safer to use checkinstall rather than 'make install' where that
is called for, since this will let the packaging system know that the
files are installed.

By the way, instead of CLX, I recommend that you look at DX Spider,
which is pretty equivalent, but has continuing development and better
support.  I have been using this myself for a couple of years.  You can
find it at <http://www.dxcluster.org>.

Bob Nielsen (N7XY)





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