Software Management

Many people are of the mind that Linux only has ancient and/or difficult versions of programs and functionality that you want. This is simply not true, but you will find distributions that include a lot of the older tools. When something works... You will find complete and cutting-edge desktops in the Linux world today. While it's true that there are many versions of programs that perform the same or similar tasks that you want accomplished, some even command-line programs, you can always choose a new version with a pretty GUI to get done what you need. For instance in my terminal I would run mpg321 http://80.154.35.14:80 to listen to music and in a GUI app, say audacious or xmms I would just open the app and start clicking around to find where I could add an internet radio station address.

One thing that you will need to get used to is that the programmers often choose completely foreign sounding names to their babies. Like Gnump3d. Gnumpwhaaaaa? How would you know to call a music server Gnump3d? You wouldn't. Nobody would. What was this programmer thinking when (s)he decided to call his (her) music server Gnump3d instead of "Wicked cool Music Server". Who knows? But don't let it get you down. One of the most terrific things about the Linux that I run, and will beat you over the head to also run, is called Debian. It's the apt distribution. Apt is the package manager for Debian and by this I mean it is how you find, install, and maintain - upgrade your computer. It is so damned cool and wonderful you will appreciate it straight away. Listen, in a Windows environment the only central package manager you have is a way to install and remove programs that you have to go get. Add/Remove Programs. In your Windows environment to get the functionality that you want through some piece of software you must travel to your neighborhood software retailler or find it on the web. You almost always have to go buy the software, then install it. The installation is simple enough, you double click on an .exe file and the installer does the rest. There's some functionality. It's nice to be able to double-click a file and have it install. No doubt.

On my Debian box I never have to seek out software on the web. I never have to travel to my neighborhood software retailler. I never have to buy software (but I can). Man, I open Synaptic (GUI), or run apt from a terminal (CLI), search for the functionality or the name of the package that I want, and install that badboy. You did read that I open a locally installed program, right? You did read that I don't have to search the advertising ridden and outdated shareware sites, right? You did read and understand that I don't have to shell out $300 some-odd dollars for an office package so I can write my fancy-formatted documents, right? It's true, my friend.

Debian uses a central repository to maintain software, or, "packages", installed on your machine. It's such a beautiful thing. On my computer is a file that contains some server addresses (/etc/apt/sources.list). These addresses connect to central repositories of software. The interface, apt or Synaptic (or Aptitude, et al) simply querey's the list of software available in these repositories and installs, removes, upgrades...whatever, your software. I (you) don't have to leave your own computer to manage the software on your machine!

In the file that contains repository addresses you may add all that you like -- but don't get carried away, and realize that there are versions of the Linux distribution that you are using. You don't really want to start mixing these versions up. If you hear of a terrific program for Linux that does what you want, and you have already searched through Synaptic, you might want to goto the website of the folks that make this software to find their repository address. They may have a repository of their own and you can add its address to the list in your own repository listing. Then update Synaptic and now have this software available to you like all the rest -- right from your desktop. That's some cool functionality. It draws many to Linux, and rightly so. You can always just download software that you want and can't find locally, too. Instead of adding this software's repository to your sources.list file, you can just download the software directly and install it through another function.

You can compile your software. Now -- hold on. Compile means the same thing it has always meant. The same that it meant in 5th grade when you learned that word on Friday when you got your new vocabulary list. Don't start bugging out now -- you already cooled your heels about the whole terminal thing. This is even less a bother, hinderance or fear to new Linux users.

Sometimes software writers don't make a convenient package for you to download and double-click on (yessir -- you may install software this way in Linux -- Debian, as well). Sometimes your only option is compile from a .tar file. All a .tar file is is an archive, just like a .zip file. Inside the .tar file are all the files (less dependancies, but don't sweat this yet) necessary to make and install the program. The thing is, you must compile software this way through your terminal -- you must enter commands instead of clicking on a thing.

You do not have to build, run, update, maintain or otherwise add functionality that you want by compiling software manually. It's just there if you want to, or if you really want some piece of software that is only available to you this way. It's the simplest thing in the world, really. You just have more interaction, or control, this way. I dig it, and you may, too.

When compiling software it's important for your computer to have this functionalty available to you. Installing Debian as your Linux distribution of choice gives you this functionality straight away. You know -- you're gonna have this with about any Linux distribution that you'll install. Compiling software yourself is cool because you get to build the software to your machine's build. You get to take full advantage of your machine's specific hardware and capabilities.

OK -- I have written compiled, build -- and more. You might be losing interest right about now because these are totally foreign concepts to you when you are computing using the Windows OS. I hear you, but really, your computer will be doing all the work. These are just terms of what is taking place. All you have to do is type a word or 2 into a terminal and your computer will compile, build. I know the Linux crowd makes it sound like they're so talented and computer savy when they write -- "Yep, I compiled this big program last night and it took hours. I'm so l33t". That's pretty funny. Sure, some programs do take a while to build, compile Gnome one time, and some require more user input. However, that braggart did nothing that you can't do. (s)he typed the same words (commands) that you will and then (s)he went and finished painting his/her house, or the build finished in seconds.

If you decide that you really want the latest version of gnucash, and your Debian Etch install only has the previous version available through your apt repositories, well, goto the gnucash website and download the .tar file. It may be listed under "source". Save it in your /home/you/downloads/office/ directory because you know that you seperate your giant downloads mess into neat categories.

When it's downloaded you can open Nautilus and go into that directory. Or if you don't have that fancy "open terminal here" script installed so you can right-click in Nautilus and "open terminal here", just get there in your terminal. You're going to need it anyway. In your terminal you "change to the directory" by using the "cd" command. See, cd -- change directory. Simple. Type: cd wherever/you/downloaded/it/too, and hit enter. Now you are in the directory where your .tar download is. Hey -- we've been through the terminal/graphical interface thing already so you might be thinking - why can't I goto this directory in my file browser and open the .tar file like any .zip file in Windows. WinZip is probably the program that you use as the graphical way to open your archives in Windows. Well, file-roller is the gnome counterpart on your Debian box. By all means, you can, but like I wrote, to compile we'll need to be in the terminal anyway.

It's up to you, you can extract the .tar file contents through a graphical interface: Nautilus/File-roller, or you can do it through your terminal by issuing the following command:

tar -xvzf gnucash-2.1.2.tar.gz

or

bunzip2 RecomXaraLX0.7_rev1692.tar.bz2

or

tar -xvf gnucash-2.1.2.tar

.gz, or .bz2 extention archives are further compressed for space. Notice the "z" in the first tar command, this is to uncompress a .gz archive. After you issue the command to uncompress the .gz, or .bz2 (see the second command above), you will be left with the .tar file, so issuing the third command that I have listed is necessary.

Now, where we need to be is inside the directory that contains all the files that you just extracted. From the terminal you : cd gnuc and hit the tab key -- cool. It finished the directory name for you, hit enter.

Compiling/making is so simple. And we are ready, but this is where we talk about a nuissance issue about running Linux. In a lot of ways people are correct when they complain about "dependancy hell". And, in a lot of ways they are wrong, as well. On a Debian machine, dependancy hell almost doesn't exist. However, if you decided to download some .tar file to build you must be aware that that software may require other software to be available on your machine that it uses to function. These are dependancies. Software may be dependant on other software to run. This is true of any piece of software on any OS. On Windows, everything necessary comes with the .exe file that you download -- OR -- the software will take advantage of files already a part of WIndows. Linux is no different. On a Windows box you may have .dll files that are tapped by software. On Linux you might have libXXX.so.6 as the library that acts the same way.

Since Linux is so customizable by you, the makers of the distribution that you favor can not possibly consider and include all of the necessary software that you'll need to install any other software that you might find and want. Windows doesn't do it either, this is why so much software screws up your Windows system -- because those folks making their software for Windows include everything necessary for you to double-click and have the program install as promised. The versions of necessary dependancies that they include might not be so wonderful to introduce to your Windows box. Sometimes dependancies that accompany a piece or software for Windows will overwrite the already existing version on the system. This is typically bad. However, the most important system libraries and the like on a Windows box are protected from being overwritten. This doesn't happen on your Linux machine. What you want to install will use the shared library on your system without overwriting it, but the software that you are compiling might need a different version of that library. This may cause problems, but it is rare enough that you will probably never see it. If you do, I know a couple forums that will do what they can to help you out.

If you downloaded an archive from a website that you want to install you can usually find a list of prerequisites for installing the program right there on the web site. Make sure that you have these installed before you start to build your software. If you don't the build or install will fail -- but -- you will be shown which dependancies are missing, or which library versions need addressing so you can install them.

This is a bona-fide issue and it can really annoy some users. It has been, and is being, addresses and at this point is almost a non-issue. In fact, you may never face it because you will, in all probability, find all the software that you will ever want right there locally through Synaptic.

Well, now that all that background is done, and we're in a terminal inside the downloaded software's extracted directory -- we are ready to begin compiling that software you just had to have. Here come the not-at-all-complicated commands (words). First command:

./configure

Second command:

make

Last command, and you must become root in order to do this one:

make-install

Yeah. That's it -- you have compiled/built software on your Linux box. See? I told you all those big-talkers were just that. You just typed a couple words and your computer did the rest.

Of course there can be more to it than that. Remember when I wrote that by running a command through the terminal that you can add variables? Well, you can always add variables when you compile software. To find out what these are you simply ask configure to show them to you like this:

./configure --help

You will be presented with a list of all the options that you can use to build your software. Sweet -- and completely unnecessary for you to enjoy Linux, but available to you nonetheless.

Earlier I wrote that you can certainly double-click downloaded software to install it. True enough. These files don't have an .exe extension like software for Windows, they have a .deb extension. They aren't really any different. The normal, or traditional way to install a .deb package was to do it with dpkg through a terminal. The command was (is):

dpkg -i opera-static_9.21-20070510.1-qt_en_i386.deb

dpkg does many things, the -i switch tells dpkg to install the package. Go ahead, type:

dpkg --help

into your terminal. You will see a whole bunch of things that you can do to take better advantage of the program and control more installation aspects.

These days there is a program called gdebi that will open and take charge of installing the .deb file when you double-click it. It's not installed by default on your Debian Etch machine, but it is only a Synaptic search away. gdebi will manage any dependancies necessary to install the program you want, too. If they are unavailable you will be informed, but it will also download any needed dependancies that it can, based on your repository list or available servers. So, I hope all the naysayers have their answer -- you can certainly install a program in Debian by double-clicking it. It just has to be a .deb package. But -- there is more general goodness - you can make your own .deb packages! We'll leave that alone for now, though, as it is outside of the scope of this article.

Well, we have gone over two of some important issues facing, and even preventing, new users to Linux. Certainly new users have these concerns and they are valid, but you now see that they can be simple no-brainers as well. Linux doesn't force you to do things in a certain way -- it enables you to do things any number of ways. Just choose your way and there you go. It can be as simple or complicated as you like.

In this article I have included some commands that you may want to explore further. Take a look at some of the following links:

• Linux Commands
• Basic Linux Commands
• Linux Tar command
• More Common Commands
• file Management Commands
• Basic Admin Commands, et al
• Way Useful
• Debian Reference (choose your language)

man [program/command];

into a terminal