Hi Dark_Sniper*,
In my opinion, one of the very best things about Debian is that once you have it up and running, you have a huge amount of software available to you, and it's really easy to install and manage software. The software programs that install and manage software are called package managers, and in Debian, all software comes in packages. You don't need to install from source code, although you can. (Packages come both as source code and as binaries; usually binary packages are fine.)
There is a software package named Synaptic that is usually recommended to those new to Linux and Debian. Synaptic is useful because it is a graphical tool that lets you install, upgrade and remove software packages just like you can with APT. In fact, behind the scenes, Synaptic uses APT, which belongs to the fundamental Debian packages. (Commands such as apt-get are part of APT.) When you installed Debian, APT came with it, and Synaptic may or may not have been installed, depending on the installation choices you made.
A good exercise for you would be to use APT commands in a terminal in order to check whether Synaptic is already installed. (If you have Gnome installed, Synaptic is likely already installed.) Here are some steps to help you do that. Note that commands following "$" are executed under your normal account, and commands following "#" are executed as root.
1. Open a terminal window in KDE or Gnome (such as Konsole, gnome-terminal, xterm, etc.)
2. Enter the following command:
Code:
$ apt-cache policy synaptic
apt-cache is an APT command. It will produce output similar to this:
Code:
$ apt-cache policy synaptic
synaptic:
Installed: 0.55+cvs20050503-4
Candidate: 0.55+cvs20050503-4
Version Table:
*** 0.55+cvs20050503-4 0
500 http://debian.ethz.ch stable/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
If your output looks like this, then Synaptic is already installed. If it says "Installed: (none)", then Synaptic is not already installed.
3. Regardless of whether Synaptic is installed, switch to root user by typing in the command "su" (stands for switch user, and if no user is specified, switches to super-user), hit Enter, and give root's password. Now you will see a # sign at the command-line prompt.
4. Simulate installing the Synaptic package by giving the following command:
Code:
# apt-get -s install synaptic
The "-s" is called a switch: it is an option to the command apt-get, and stands for simulating the installation without actually doing it. (You can find out about other options by typing in "apt-get --help".) If Synaptic was already installed and up to date, you'll get output that looks similar to this:
Code:
# apt-get -s install synaptic
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
synaptic is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
If Synaptic was not already installed, you'll get messages that show a simulation of synaptic and any other packages on which it depends (which could be a small or large number of packages) being installed and configured.
5. If Synaptic is not installed and you would like to install it, run the command without -s:
Code:
# apt-get install synaptic
Now Synaptic will be fetched from your sources (likely to be CD or from the Internet) and installed.
6. Now you can use Synaptic to install, manage and remove other software packages. There are various ways to do that. Synaptic must be run with root privileges. From Gnome, choose (from the menu) Applications > System Tools > Synaptic Package Manager. (Unless I'm wrong, it should be there after you've installed Synaptic.) I'm not so sure if there is an entry in the K menu in KDE, but you can look around. From the terminal, you need to use the su command to switch to root (you still should be logged in as root), and then just type in
The & at the end isn't necessary, but that allows you to keep the prompt free at the terminal while Synaptic is running. (If you open Synaptic with the terminal, it's a good idea to keep that terminal open until you close Synaptic, because closing the terminal might close Synaptic, which if it's running an installation could cause problems.)
It's important that you realize that package management, even when made easy, is somewhat complicated. Packages usually depend on other packages, and there are metapackages that bind large groups of packages together. Read the docuentation for Synaptic if you're going to use it, because this will save you a lot of headaches. (From Synaptic, press F1 or from the menu bar choose Help > Contents.) You can also read the APT How-To which is linked in my signature.
hope that helps