Help on how to injstall tar.gz file

[caminoix]

happens

thank you very much i think this is rather enough
bad luck, i can only see it tomorrow evening
in case i have any problems (but i don't really think i will, with that howto ) i'll ask you to let me ask you again...

just the last question (i hope, and i guess so do you ):
if i download and succeed to install a p2p client, where will be the downloaded files stored? is it the ram disk? but then, how could i use them under windows, given i'd ever like to?

[OErjan]

you maty ask as much as you want.
just do SOME of the work yourself
it is not fun to do ALL your work.
the documentation link on top of page is helpful for MANY things, look trough that first.
oh and here are a few external links with more general information.
http://www.tldp.org/
http://www.debian.org/doc/
http://www.debian.org/doc/user-manuals#apt-howto
and here a link to a "crashcourse" in linux from the comandline.
the level is not easy but it IS fairly thurough.
you get a fairly good grip of basics trough it.
http://floppix.com/labs.html
if you strugle trough it a few times i would say that you know enough to use 90% of the most used comands well.
The site it may be 5 years old and the distribution content is even older but ~98% is still same at the console.

[caminoix]

trying... but it's not really very easy when you have no idea about the names of the programs &c., and when everything is new to you. but i'll do my best and try not to ask too much

ps. i just had a thought it could be useful to have a help for windows users exclusively, explaining the linux terms &c. with their windows correspondences.

[OErjan]

there is such sites. brb with a few links
hewre is one (little old but extensive).
http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-l...en/table.shtml
another
http://www.linux.lk/software/windows.php
and another
http://www.tuxs.org/winusekde.htm
and yet another
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO...nux-HOWTO.html
and
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ndows_software
...
http://www.goldfiles.com/multimedia/...software.shtml
...
http://www.impactsites2000.com/tekreview/Linux_Ark.htm
do you need more?
the first link is the least effort for quick searching, if you scroll down a bit it is all a table. the others are more like articles and lectures.

[OErjan]

do you have a usb pen? a CD or DVD burner (other than the drive you use for Knoppix)? if yes you casn burn cd's and DVD's like in Windows, just use a CD-RW and burn to that as you need. reboot into Win and load the files there and wipe the CD ...
or use a pendrive, they are fairly cheap and usually work well in Linux. i have tried a Sandisk cruzer (Sandisk cruzer micro) nd and a bunch of nonames. all but one noname and another brandname (do not remember brand) worked GREAT, and both the troublesome disks worked great after being formated to fat16 (a windows filesystem) in linux.
EDIT formating MIGHT break the disk, not likely but risk is real)

[caminoix]

thank you very much once again
i don't even know where to look for that sort of answers, that's it. this site was at the very top of google results, so i sticked to it. but after all, it would be most unfair of me to say it wasn't extremely helpful
sorry for taking your time and thank you for being ready to share it with me

[fingers99]

i know it's naive, but it doesn't matter which distribution i have, right?

Well, it does for installing packages. I'm assuming you have a HD install of Knoppix.

For any Knoppix the following is true. Knoppix is based on Debian which uses .deb packages and a package management tool called apt-get. So, to install packages (let's say you want synaptic, which is the graphical front end to apt-get) you'd do:

su
(prompt for root password)
apt-get update && apt-get install synaptic && exit

(the && simply means do the next command after you've finished the one before it: exit just returns the console to a normal user -- you don't want to be root for longer than you need to be).

You can also use "tarballs" which are compressed (or, at least. archived) source files. These will have .tar, .tgz or .tar.gz suffixes. Their use is not recommended as they make the system harder to update and there are very few programs not released as .deb. Same goes for .rpm (which is a format used by some other Linux distros) although at a pinch you can install them with a program called alien.

[csdavid]

Konqueror, the web browser? really a FILE MANAGER, makes this very easy. Start->Internet->Konqueror.
Browse to where you downloaded the tar file.
Point at the file. Click (or double click) to open the file. Examine the contents.

Guys, stay away from the command line stuff. Tar files are Zip files with bad naming conventions.
The GUI handles it. Give people the simplest way to reach their goal.
Trust the applications that are in the distribution.

They can make Windows look like riding an old pig.

Diatribe aside, after you extract the files (using rightclick->Extract->ExtractHere) you will have a folder "install_flash_player_7_linux" that has a shell script "flashplayer-installer". rightclick->OpenWith->Other...
and type "sh" in the application dialog and click on the "Run inTerminal" and "Do not close when command exits" check boxes.
Then you will see something very much like this:

Copyright(C) 2002-2003 Macromedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Macromedia Flash Player 7 for Linux

Macromedia Flash Player 7 will be installed on this machine.

You are running the Macromedia Flash Player installer as a non-root user.
Macromedia Flash Player 7 will be installed in your home directory.

Support is available at http://www.macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/

To install Macromedia Flash Player 7 now, press ENTER.

To cancel the installation at any time, press Control-C.

Follow the prompts and you are on your way.

[jjmac]

Just a bit of .deb package trivia.

There basically just an "ar" file. Which itself is __very__ similar to a "tar" file, (archive and tape-archive files).

If you do ...

]$ ar -x <filename>.deb

You will get three files,

data.tar.gz
control.tar.gz
debian

The last just being a text file. You can then expand the two .tar.gz files if you want.

]$ tar -zxf control|data.tar.gz

And they will expand into the current directory.


If you go,

]$ ar <filename>.deb debian control.tar.gz data.tar.gz

You will have your package back. Order is important.

Purpose (grin), not much, but handy if you just want to pull a package apart just to have a look, with out having to install it.


jm

[caminoix]

thanks, guys

csdavid:
staying away from command line is certainly helpful. it's not that i'm very much against it, but it might really be discouraging for a complete newbie just like me
riding an old pig? I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston Churchill

just one question more: what do i do if installing from source fails 'cause i don't know where to find files it says it needs or it doesn't say what files it needs, and synaptic can't see neither the .tar.gz nor the same converted to .deb, and finally dpkg -i only gets me an installed and uncompressed but uncompiled source?