Each distro uses its own package management system. Ubuntu uses aptitude. Are you actually interested in learning about how to do it on Ubuntu, or were you just providing an example? It will be different on other distros.

Hi and welcome to LQ.

Google is an excellent tool to find such information.

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The commands differ between distributions, Debian based distribution use the APT package manager with can be used with several tools, like dpkg, apt-get/apt-cache, aptitude and several GUI programs. Distributions that use the RPM package management system differ even more, while all of them have the basic rpm tool they have more advanced tools that differ between distributions, like yum for Red Hat based systems and zypper for openSuse/Suse. Very few distributions mix this (eg PCLinuxOS using RPM packages managed by APT), some distributions use again different package formats, like Arch and Slackware. Source based distributions mostly have their own package format.
In short, there is no general way for any distribution out there (except compiling from source, which is not really recommended on distributions with (dependency resolving) package management systems), if you need to know it for a specific distribution it is the best to have a look at the documentation from that distribution.

This is in two ways wrong. At first, aptitude isn't even installed by default on Ubuntu, at second, aptitude is a package manager, but not a package management system. The package management system is APT.

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Package management system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_management_system
DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. - http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?res...age-management
Chapter*3.*Package Management - https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/server...anagement.html
Installing software in Ubuntu - http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installingsoftware

Sorry, thanks for clearing the air. I don't use Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based distros for several reasons, so I'm not 100% familiar with them.

If you are installing a piece of software from terminal you can type
If you are installing from the graphical interface then do it from Synaptic
or you can install from the Ubuntu Software Center or Ubuntu app store.


Just do a search for the application you are looking for.

Dont try to install windows only programs such as Whaterver.exe because is not going to work

Good luck to you.