We all know how simple it is to install downloaded applications on the Windows platform. What would you say if I told you it was just as easy to install a downloaded application on the Linux platform? And not just on Ubuntu…but on other Linux distributions. Would you be surprised? Would you be in disbelief? Well, for those disbelievers I have the proof for you today. In this article I will show you how to install downloaded applications, in Linux, with a double click.

What this applies to

Before you think this is going to show you how to install an application from source with a double click, think again. This will only apply to the packages created for a systems package manager. What that means is you can install .deb files in an apt-based (or dpkg-based) system (such as Ubuntu) or .rpm files in an RPM-based system (such as Fedora). If you are wanting to install from source, you will have to employ the command line tool. For the rest…you are just a double click away from installation goodness.

The dependency issue

There can, of course, be issues with this installation. The biggest issue will be dependencies. If a file you are attempting to install has unmet dependencies it will not install. When this happens you can try to meet those dependencies by using your Add/Remove Software tool. Or you can attempt to download the dependency files (after googling them and finding the right version) and install in the same way you are going to install the main application. This is one of the many reasons why it is always best to use your package management system. There are, of course, times when you need a package installed that it not in your package management system and there are no repositories for that tool. That is when this method will come into play.

How it works

Believe it or not, it works in much the same way as it does on the Windows  platform. Let’s see just how this works. I am going to install a package (one that I will writing about very soon) called Hot Copy. For that tool I have downloaded the .zip file (which contains binaries in both .deb and .rpm format. That file will have downloaded to my ~/Downloads directory. Here are the steps for installation (I will be explaining this from the GNOME desktop).

Step 1

Open up Nautilus to the ~/Downloads directory. In this directory you will see the .zip file you downloaded.

Figure 1

Step 2

Double click on the newly downloaded file. This will open up the archive file to display all of the contents. In the case of this file there will be two directories and a help file. The two directories will be for each of the different hardware architecture (x86 for 32 bit systems and x86_64 for 64 bit systems). Double click on the directory for your machines architecture to reveal the included installation files (see Figure 1).

Step 3

Figure 2

For the Ubuntu installation I am going to install both .deb files in this package. First I will double click the hotcopy .deb file. When I do this it will open up the GDebi package installation tool. When this new window opens (see Figure 2)  all I have to do is click the Install package buttton. GDebi will ask for the users password to complete the installation. You might recognize GDebi from any time you have downloaded a .deb file from the web. it’s the same routine.

When the installation is complete GDebi will report the installation is finished and you can then close the progress window and then close the GDebi window.

That’s it. And, believe it or not, the process is pretty much the same on the Fedora distribution as well.

Final thoughts

I bet you never thought installation applications in Linux was this easy. Well, Linux has come a long, long way since the early days when the command line was a requirement. Now, it seems, the command line is only an option. Although I can’t imagine myself using Linux without the command line (it’s how I was taught after all), it is completely possible to do so.

In this article I am going to show you the basics of some of the more popular package management systems as well as the basics of installing via source. I will not spend too much time on each (otherwise this article could grow rather overwhelming). By the end of this article you should know how to install, querey, and remove applications with the more popular tools.

Source

Let’s start from the source. Generally when you download a package for installation that ends with tgz, gz, bz2, or *zip this will be a source installation. For these installations you are going to take advantage of some powerful compilation tools. But before you can start the compilation you have to unpack the source directory. If your file ends with a “bz2″ you will first have to ucompress the file will the command bunzip2 APPLICATION.tar.bz2. This will result in a new file like APPLICATION.tar. Tar is an archive system that rolls up directories into a file. To unpack the directory you would issue a command similar to tar xvf APPLICATION.tar. Unpacking the directory would then result in a directory (in our example) APPLICATION.

If the downloaded file ended in tgz or gz then you have a compressed archive and you simply have to add the “z” switch to the tar command to both uncompress and unpack the archive. This command would look like tar xvfz APPLICATION.tgz, which would result in the directory APPLICATION.

Once you have your directory unpacked you need to change into that directory (with the command cd APPLICATION). Once inside this directory issue the ls command. You will most likely see either a README file or an INSTALL file. Open those up and see if there are any special instructions for installation. If there are no special instructions then the standard compilation steps will most likely work. Here’s how this works:

• su to the root user
• From within the APPLICATION directory issue the command ./configure. This will generate a make file for the compilation.
• Issue the command make.
• Issue the command make install

That’s it. If all went as planned, the application should be installed.

RPM

RPM is the Red Hat Package Manager. Installing via RPM is actually quite simple. Here’s how this works. Once you have downloaded the rpm file you want to install, open up a terminal window and issue the following commands:

• su (you will be prompted to enter the root password)
• rpm -ivh filename.rpm (where filename is the actual name of the file you downloaded)

That’s it. If all went well your package should now be installed.

If you want to make sure your package was installed you can issue the command rpm -q filename and you should see the name of the package and the version that is installed.

If you want to remove that package you just installed (or another package) issue the command:

rpm -e filename

and the package will disappear.

APT-GET

This is one of the best installation systems available. With apt-get you do not have to download a package, you just have to know the name. Here’s how apt-get works (I am going to assume Ubuntu is the distribution, so you’ll make use of sudo). Open up a terminal window and issue the following:

sudo apt-get install package_name

to install the needed package.

To remove a package with apt-get you would issue the command:

sudo apt-get remove package_name

to remove the package from your system.

URPMI

The urpmi system is from the Mandriva distribution and is similar to apt-get. To install a package with urpmi you would open up a terminal window, become the root user, and issue the following command:

urpmi package_name

to install the needed package.

To remove a package with this system you would issue the command:

urpme package_name

and the package will be removed.

DPKG

This is the Debian installer and is as easy to use as any other. To use dpkg you will open up a terminal window and issue the following command to install a package:

sudo dpkg -i package_name

to install a package.

To remove a package issue the command:

sudo dpkg -r package_name

and the package will be gone.

Final Thoughts

There you go. A very basic description of package management with the more popular tools. Yes, there is much, much more to them than what you have just read, but this will give you enough of a foundation to get you going