[Sussex] Installing programs in Linux

[John Crowhurst]

On Sat, May 3, 2008 20:42, davidpipe at tiscali.co.uk wrote:
> At the moment helping Peter Moule with his PCLinux pc.  As I am
> knowledgeable with MS Windros I know how to install,  even from a
> compressed file.
>
> However Am total beginner on Linux.  I cannot find a site which explain s
> how to install programs under Linux OS's.  All the sites take it for
> granted that EVERYONE using Linux is totally experienced - probably a
> reason for a lower take-up of Linux.

On Windows there is only one way of doing things, you run an installer
that takes care of most of the tricky things for the user.

It depends on the Linux distribution as to the tools available to install
packages. Debian has apt, RedHat has rpm, Slackware has pkgtools, etc.

If you think that a lot of Linux distributions run on servers, the
installers tend to be text based rather than graphics based like Windows,
and tend to have multiple purposes to install, audit, upgrade and remove
packages.

-- 
John Crowhurst
John's Computer Support