Software Installation Pains

[Steven Susbauer]

On Aug 5, 2009, at 6:33 PM, Karl F. Larsen wrote:

> Jay Daniels wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 10:50 -0600, Edwin McGuire wrote:
>>> New to Ubuntu, Last Linux distro I had was Mandrake 7.1
>>> anyways still learning.
>>> here's my problem.
>>>
>>> I'm running Ubuntu 9.04
>>> Downloaded some files (Gparted,VirtualBox,Wine,WVDial,Debconf.) from
>>> the Web at the library, so far none will install.
>
> 	Not true. They will all install IF you get them from a Ubuntu
> repository! Why are you fighting this? I also have Ubuntu 9.04 and not
> all the strange things you want but it sure works fine!

Seems pretty obvious. If he's downloading at the library it would  
appear this machine may not be connected to the internet (or can't  
without some additional software - though wvdial should already be  
there). You can download Ubuntu .debs and they will install with gdebi  
when you double click them, if there is an internet connection it will  
download the dependencies which is not being done in this case, again  
probably due to the lack of an internet connection. You don't *have*  
to use apt-get, Synaptic and the like yourself, it's just the normal  
way of doing things.