Installing New Software Help

To install new software:

Warning! If when using any of the following methods you find that the software package you are installing is calling for other software to be removed from your system, then you should ask for help.

The easy way to install software

1. Use synaptic

First click on 'install software' which can be found to the right of your main menu.

Then check this guide

http://www.debianadmin.com/simple-package-management-with-synaptic-package-manager-in-ubuntu.html

Note to BW volunteers we should do our own synaptic guide based on Ubuntu one

More advanced ways to install software

2. If you can't find what you are looking for in synaptic, search for it by typing 'the-name-of-the-software.deb' into Google or your favourite search engine. When you have searched for and found the desired software package that says '.deb' at the end, you should click on it using your right mouse button and download it to your desktop. When it has downloaded, right click on the icon that has been created in your destop, and select 'open with kpackage'. After kpackage appears on your screen, click on 'install' in both of the windows that pop up.

3. If the piece of software that you want to use has not been packaged as a .deb file, but is an .rpm (= Red Hat Package Manager, a common form of package for other Linux distributions) then you will have to use alien, a CommandLine tool. Type su to be root and type your root password, then type alien -d name_of_the_software.rpm and alien will convert that package to name_of_the_software.deb for you. Then you can type dpkg -i name_of_the_software.deb to install that program on your system.

4. In the unlikely event that you cannot find a .deb or a .rpm of the software that you want, then you can download and unpack what is known as a 'tarball'; this just means that the files have been compressed and 'wrapped up'. The following steps will help you to 'unwrap' the packages. First you will have to go to download the file to your desktop (this will end in .gz .tar .zip tar.bz2 or .rar), then go to the CommandLine and:

a. Type su to become root and type your root password;

b. If the file you have downloaded has only a gz extension type gzip -d name_of_the_software.gz and it will extract all the files;

c. If the file has tar.gz type gzip -d name_of_the_software.tar.gz then you have to type tar -xf name_of_the_software.tar to fully extract;

d. If the file has zip at the end type unzip name_of_the_software.zip to extract;

e. If the file has tar.bz2 at the end type bzip2 -d name_of_the_software.tar.bz2 and then follow with tar -xf name_of_the_software.tar to extract;

f. If the archive has .rar at the end, type unrar x name_of_the_software.rar.

After you have extracted your program, you will see a folder has been made for it. Type 'cd name_of_the_folder' to go into that folder. If there is a readme and/or install file in it, read it/them (it really is worth the trouble). If it doesn't tell you how to configure and install the program, here are the basic things you have to do to compile and install the program:

1. type ./configure --prefix=/usr

2. then after it's configured type make

3. then you install by typing make install

4. to remove all the temporary files made for the install, type make clean.

It's best to reboot your system after this in order to make sure the program gets set up in your KMenu for you, but you won't have to do this if you can click on KMenu and see your newly installed program listed in the menu there somewhere.

5. If you need to run legacy Windows applications then they may work on your machine as we have already installed wine; for games you can install cedega or for office applications crossover office. Both Codewavers and Wine HQ have extensive searchable databases of Windows software that will work under Linux.