I just downloaded a program in the .tar.gz format. How do I install it?
In Linux, there is no nice GUI wizard that will walk you through installation most of the time. Instead, you will have to do it through the command line:
Open up a shell terminal session and go to the directory where the program is stored. In this example, it is /home/mattmodica/stuff/program.tar.gz. Type in the following commands to unpack and configure it.
Code:
mattmodica@Stargate:~$ cd /home/mattmodica/stuff/
mattmodica@Stargate:~/stuff$ tar xzf program.tar.gz
mattmodica@Stargate:~/stuff$ cd /home/mattmodica/stuff/program/
mattmodica@Stargate:~/stuff/program$ ./configure
mattmodica@Stargate:~/stuff/program$ make
mattmodica@Stargate:~/stuff/program$ su -c 'make install'
Some distros, you should use sudo.
Code:
mattmodica@Stargate:~/stuff/program$ sudo 'make install'
Of course, it probably won't be called 'program', so be sure to substitute that for whatever the name is, as well as 'mattmodica' for whatever your username is if it is in your home folder. For simplicity, put these programs in your home folder. That should do it, to run the program, you should go to run command from the main menu and run the name of the program.