Request for simplified instructions for downloading and installing .tar.gz applications - Ventoy

[Jon LaBadie]

On Tue, Aug 02, 2022 at 01:16:50PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
...
>Now, this ventoy thing has appeared (and, has previously been
>discussed), and, it is not available as a .deb package for installation
>(and updating) through operating system package management.
>
>On the ventoy web site, from what I have seen, the instructions are
>something like
>1. Download the .tar.gz file
>2. Decompress the .tar.gz file
>3. Run the resultant .sh file
>
>But, to do this on a Ubuntu system, using the Ubuntu filesystem
>hierarchy, which pathways should be used?
>
>I assume that a person should not just download the .tar.gz file to the
>home directory, and, decompress whatever gets squeezed out of it, into
>the home directory.
>
>So, I am asking for a simplified, step by step, instruction set,

When I get an application as a tar file I first look at its "table
of contents" to see what it contains.  Also to determine if it will
extract using absolute pathnames (ex /usr/bin/ventoy) or relative
paths (ex ./ventoy).  After downloading "ventoy.tar.gz" as an example,
the command would be "tar tvzf ventoy.tar.gz".  The output will be
similar to and "ls -l" listing of the tar file contents.

If, as expected, the listing shows relative pathnames, I would extract
the archive into a directory under my home directory.  I would not
make /applications/ventoy as that would require root privileges and
at this point you should not be working as root.

- mkdir ~/ventoy.d
- mv ventoy.tar.gz ~/ventoy.d
- cd ~/ventoy.d
- tar xzf ventoy.tar.gz

Now follow the instructions and run the *.sh program.  It may already
be executable so just run it by name, else run it as "sh {whatever}.sh".


-- 
Jon H.  LaBadie                  ubu at labadie.us