File Installation

[Josué Alcalde González]

El jue, 16--2006 a las 22:25 +0000, Michael Clayton escribió:
> The Items that i have tried to install came in a sequence.
> 
> first i wanted to install a windows program and since Ubuntu looked so much 
> like windows i thought it might be willing to install. thus i tried and it 
> did not want to install because it was not Linux compatible.
> 
> Then i went online and found the program named "Wine 0.9.9" or "Wine 0.9.10" 
> and downloaded them but after i had that downloaded it did not want to 
> unzip.

Wine is a program which allow to run windows applications in linux.
It is only a beta and it doesn't work for all applications.
Sometimes, it needs hard work to make it work.
You sholud check the wine site for more information
http://www.winehq.com

> Thus i went online again and found the programs of "Bzip 2" and "Tar" and 
> downloaded both those programs. I started with "Bzip 2" but i couldn't 
> figure out how to install it through the Readme so i downloaded Tar and i 
> couldn't figure that out either. (there had been one other program but i 
> don't remember what it was and the whole bunch of stuff is at the other 
> school i go to).
> 
Bzip and tar are applications which are installed by default. They are
command line applications and file-roller, installed by default, is a
graphical front-end for them.

> Eventually i found a website that told the whole process step by step very 
> well. The problem i ran into then was that the commands listed did not work. 
> Commands like "Make" "configure" or "install" any of those. none worked and 
> so i stopped and just emailed you so that you might be of some help.
> 
You need install build-essentials package for this but it is not the
default way to install applications.

In most of Linux distributions, software is installed using packages. In
debian and Ubuntu, they used .deb packages. They are prepared and it is
not a yes-yes-yes-yes way, it is better.

With debian and ubutnu, you download a list of packages available. When
you select a package to install it, the software is downloaded and
installed by default in a good place. It will only ask something if it
is completely necessary (most of packages won't ask nothing).

You should take a look at:
- Applications -> Add/Remove
- System -> Administration -> Synaptic package Manager