Installing Linux Apps

If you read our posting,"Must Have Linux Apps," you are probably wondering how to find and install this treasure-trove of useful applications. This posting will cover that. As you will see, installing apps in Linux, is both easy and painless.

There are two ways to download and install applications to your new system. Most mainstream distributions, including Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora use the "Synaptic Package Manager" graphical user interface. Synaptic is a great tool for browsing through the extraordinary number of free software packages that are available for your Linux system. If you are familiar with Android's Market, or Apple's App Store, Synaptic should be a snap to master. Even for novices, Synaptic is fairly simple to learn.

Synaptic is useful for searching through software directories if you are not sure what to install. However, if you do know the name of the package you want, it is far quicker to use the terminal program to install packages. One line of code is usually all it takes to install a package.

A simple demonstration would be "VLC." First, open the terminal. On an Ubuntu or Mint system, you will find it in the menu under "Accessories." Also, the following commands apply to any Linux system that are built using the Debian fork of Linux. Ubuntu and Mint are constructed from Debian.

Once the terminal is open, type "sudo apt-get install -y vlc", and hit the "Enter" button on your keyboard. You will be prompted for your password. Type in, hit "Enter" again, and that's all there is to it. It would help immensely however to understand what you just did.

"sudo" gives the user system-wide, or administration privileges. In Linux, this is required anytime you install software, run security updates, or change system values. "apt-get" tells Linux that you would like to make a software change of some kind. "install" informs Linux that this change will obviously be an install, and "-y" switch tells Linux to install any additional packages that may be needed by the software you are installing. The "-y" switch saves you from having to key the "Enter" button every time a software package needs to be installed as a "dependency". It helps one keep their sanity over a period of time.

As we mentioned earlier, the above procedure is for Linux distributions based on Debian. If you are using a Red Hat based system, such as Fedora, or CentOS, the commands are a bit different. You would still open up a terminal window, but under Fedora, the terminal may be found under "System Tools". If not, scroll around your menu until you find it. I normally place a terminal icon launcher on my top panel for easy access.

Once in the terminal, type "su". This is essentially the same as "sudo" on a Debian system, with one major difference. Once you type in "su" to gain administrative access, your terminal will remain in administrative mode until you type the word "exit". This is crucial. Should you type in a wayward command under the administrative mode, you could end up doing damage to your operating system. It is a rare occurrence, but it you need to be aware of it.

After you are in administrative, or "super user" mode, type the following. "yum install -y vlc". You simply are replacing Debian's "apt-get" with "yum". Everything else follows the same procedure. Using the terminal's command line to install software is much quicker than using Synaptic, but it only works if you know which programs you wish to install ahead of time.