In my previous post I discussed the method and pitfalls for installation of software in Windows and Mac. In this post I will analyze installation procedures in Linux particularly Ubuntu.

In Ubuntu there are many methods of installing software, and each of them are intuitive and repulsive in their own manner and I will discuss them one by one.

First of all, the easiest and most common method of installing applications in Ubuntu is using a Package Manager, in GNOME environment we use the excellent Synaptic while in KDE we use Adept. In both these Package Managers, installation of Applications is a simple method of searching, choosing and installing the required application. Both these package managers use APT (in Ubuntu and Debian atleast) and automatically resolve all the dependencies. Uninstalling programs using Synaptic is just as easy and we can search and deselect the package we want to remove and it would be uninstalled. In addition we can also remove them completely i.e. along with configuration file.

In addition, most if not all the package in Synaptic/APT are secure and free of malicious scripts because most of the packages are compiled by the Developer Team or member of the Linux community (i.e. people like us) and thus enhances security in the system.

The Update manager takes care of all the recent updates and accordingly updates the programs whenever the user desires. In fact we can update the entire distro using the Update Manager.

Linux is all about choices, and apt-get the command line tool to install programs in Debian based systems such as Ubuntu demonstrates this. For people (like me) who do not mind to type or cut, copy, paste command in the terminal, it works like a treat we just have to run the terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install <Package Name>

and in works just like Synaptic and installs the packages while resolving the dependencies.
One downside of apt-get/Synaptic is that the programs must be there in the repos, otherwise it would not be able to install it. Thus installing 3rd party proprietary programs not in the repos is not possible using Synaptic/apt-get unless there are specific repositories which we have to add manually to the Software Sources before installing it. Opera is a fine example of this and we have to set custom repositories to install it.

However the beauty of Linux is that if one of the way is not working, there are several many ways too. As for installation of programs in Ubuntu in addition to method of apt-get/Synaptic; there is the second way to install programs is to downloading the DEB package file and double clicking it. However, there is a downside to this method as GDebi the program which installs these packages will not automatically resolve the dependencies and will refuse to install when there are unresolved dependencies which we have to resolve manually. However many vendors package like Opera, Crossover have self-contained packages that would easily install software in the Linux system and resolve the dependencies sometimes as well. But there is still another downside to this method is that unlike, in apt-get/Synaptic, the programs installed through this method are not updated automatically and need to be manually updated. Uninstalling these programs is through Synaptic as well and is easy enough.

It is to be noted both these methods involve the package manager with the only difference is that in the former, the apps have been set to update automatically while in latter the task is manual.

The third way of installing programs in Linux is using 3rd party tools like Automatix, EasyUbuntu, Autopackage and CNR. Of all these methods CNR is the best way and integrates well within the package manager. Thus CNR is probably the easiest way of installing applications in distributions likeUbuntu, Freespire, and Linspire. A CNR version for SUSE, Fedora,etc. is coming in the near future too.

Easy Ubuntu is limited and developments of Automatix have ceased while Autopackage is not usually recommended but still a good choice of installing programs in Ubuntu especially if your Ubuntu rig is not connected to the internet. All other methods require a fairly fast internet connection with at least respectable download limit.

You can visit their respective sites at:

http://www.cnr.com/

http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/

http://www.getautomatix.com/

http://www.autopackage.org/

The fourth method of installing programs in Linux is by executing executable files. This method is usually used by 3rd party vendors and is usually not specific for a distribution. It is not a generally recommended way of installing programs in Linux but sometimes and is not standardized and updating and uninstalling programs is different for different installers. This is most similar to Windows based installations but suffers from similar drawbacks as well.

The fifth method generally involves extracting a .tar.gz archive and running the executable program.

The sixth method is probably the most geekiest of them all. You can download source code and compile it and install it in your system. Usually guidelines differ from sources to sources and I will try to cover it in my future posts.

There are literally tons of many methods of installing programs in Linux such as Klik, ZeroInstall, and others and honestly I cannot cover all of them. If you any other intuitive method to install kindly let me know.