In this Article I will assume a few things, firstly
that you have read
Getting
Started With Linux Part 1, and also that you now have some flavour
of Linux installed.
A problem apparantly
encountered by many on Linux, is the task of
installing new programs. To install a program the easiest way is always
to use your Package Manager. This can usually be found in the
configuration module that comes with the distribution. In Mandriva it
is the Mandriva Control Centre, in SUSE it is YAST and so on.
If you
use KDE then you could also consider installing KPackage. This
interfaces well with most distributions that I have tried it on, and is
a fairly quick and easy way to install software.
As long as you have root
access then installing via a package manager can be quick and
painless. Removing software is also quite easy through a package
manager.
However the software you want is not always available via your package
manager, this leaves a choice. You can either compile the program from
source, or you can try to find a precompiled package for your system.
This article will try to cover both these methods.
If you wish to find a precompiled package, then you first need to
identify the type of package to get. If you are using an RPM based
system (Mandriva, SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora to name but a few) then you can
search for an RPM on rpmfind.net
or rpmbone.net. These normally
have the filename extension .rpm. You need to ensure that you download
an RPM for your distro otherwise you may encounter problems later on.
Both sites mentioned tell you which distro the RPM is for. Once you
have
downloaded the package, you can usually just double click it, and your
package manager will install it for you. However you may find (and
people often do) that you have problems with things called dependancies.
Dependancies are programs or libraries that the package you are
installing requires to function correctly. WHen you install something
with your Package manager it normally auto selects your dependancies
for you.
If you do hit "Dependancy hell" then for an RPM based distro, I would
recommend writing down the name of the package or library that is
missing, and then search for it in your package manager, if that is not
available then search for it on one of the sites mentioned above.
You may find it
simpler to use an Autopackage
where available, they
are not very well adopted just yet, but where available they do make
life easier. The first time you try to install an Autopackage, it will
offer to install the software necessary to install Autopackages for
you. Once this is installed, it will confirm you want to install the
Autopackage, and then proceed. This method also gives you a screen
similar to that of the Add/Remove programs dialogue in Windows.
It may be worth emailing the developer of some software you like, and
asking *politely* if they would consider putting it in an Autopackage.
For those running a Debian derivative (i.e. Debian, Ubuntu etc) there
is the option to download debian files, these normally have the
filename extension .deb. As with RPMs you can normally double click
them to set them installing. In my experience the Debian method is far
more apt (forgive the terrible pun) and checking and fetching
dependancies.
Not all projects offer Distro specific packages however, in fact many
offer only source tarballs. This is basically an archive with the
source code to the program inside as well as some other handy tools.
You are often given a choice between the type of archive to download;
filename.zip
- A zip file, yes exactly like you used to open with Winzip ;-)
filename.tar.gz
- This is a Gzipped Tarball, its compression is better than .zip
files
filename.tgz - This is
exactly the same as .tar.gz just a different way of naming it
filename.tar.bz2 - This
is a Bzipped archive, this has the best compression out of the above,
which leads to a smaller download
Which one you choose is up to you, most distros have the tools to open
any of these archives installed as default.
As you are going to be compiling from source, you will want a terminal
of some sort open. If you are running KDE then Konsole is more than
sufficient.
Having downloaded the archive foobar (Which for the sake of argument we
will say is in your home directory)
in the console run
cd ~
then
tar xvzf foobar.tar.gz
or
tar xvzf foobar.tgz
or
tar jxvf foobar.tar.bz2
or
unzip foobar.zip
followed by
cd foobar
With those to commands you have extracted the tarball and then changed
into the directory it has created. if you run the command
ls
you will see which files are available. Remember this article is
intended as a guide only and is no substitute for proper documentation.
If there is a file called INSTALL there I would recommend opening it in
a text editor and having a quick read to see how to install the program.
As a general rule of principle, you use the following commands to
compile the program from source;
./configure
make
The ./configure runs a script
called configure in the current directory, you will have seen it when
you ran ls, this script
checks your system for various dependancies, and also to obtain some
configuration variables. If the
script fails it will normally
tell you what you are missing, assuming this occurs, the first place to
go is your package manager, find if the required package is available
(You may have to google the name of the missing library to find out the
package name), and install it. If it isn't available then you are going
to need to hunt on the net for the package, use the resources mentioned
above, or pop over to the homepage of the missing package and grab it
from there (may mean another source compiation however). Once the
erroneos package is installed, run ./configure again (remember you need
to be in the directory that was created when you unpacked the archive)
OK if the ./configure script
worked, then you will be looking to run make. Simply put, make tells the system to begin
compiling the source. If this stage fails, then look through the output
for the first error of what is normally a stream of errors and warnings
at the beginning. Your best bet is to then put this into google unless
you can ascertain what is wrong yourself. Remember to put this error
into any posts you make on forums about the subject.
Once that has completed you can run the program from the local
directory, run ls to see which files are there and then (assuming the
program is called foobar) run ./foobar to run the program.
If however you want a system wide installation of the program (i.e. so
every user can run it) then follow the next steps
su
[roots password]
su stands for switch
user, it is normally used to temporarily log in as root, however it can
be used to switch to other users i.e. su
ben would lead to you being prompted for bens password. You may
find you are unable to run su, it is not always available to all users,
if you wish to use su then you need to log in as root and add your user
to the group 'wheel'. Alternatively log in as root then run (if su
worked you also want to run this)
make install
This will install the program to a directory in your PATH (More on that
in a later article), so from any console you will be able to run (in
the example)
foobar
without needing to be in the directory in which it is actually
installed.
Once this has completed don't forget to run exit to exit the su session.
I have seen many tutorials that tell you how to install from source,
but very few that also tell you how to uninstall it if needs be. To
uninstall the program (assuming you have run make install, otherwise
you can effectively just delete the directory, but read the warning
first) as root (or using su) run
make uninstall
Once that has completed the program is uninstalled, you can either then
delete the directory
cd ..
rm -r foobar/
or run
make clean
if the reason for uninstallation was to create a clean installation of
the program.
I hope this has advanced your understanding of the different packages
available, there is a wide variety out there and it can easily become
confusing. Remember unless you are after Bleeding edge then your
package manager should always be your first port of call.
Getting Started with Linux Introduction -
Why use Linux?
Getting Started with Linux Introduction Part 2 -
Hardware
Getting Started With Linux Part One
Getting Started With Linux Part Two - Installing
Software
