Install anything
 

I just want to know how to install anything. I am new to linux but have followed it for a long time. I tried linux at one point in time 8 or 9 years ago but it was too difficult if there was no one around to hold my hand.

I've heard that pclinuxos et al have become very user friendly, but it seems user friendly to people who already speak the language. I don't but want to continue using if I can get some functionality out of the programs.

I am looking at libre office and wine (I need ms office for a contract that I have and I do have that on my laptop, but if I can use my pc and laptop that would be great.)

If someone could give the 'for dummies' version of how you install programs that have been downloaded, I would appreciate it - in kindergarten speak, too.

I have pclinuxos kde. I try to access the files in ARK but it doesn't recognize them so that must not be the first step.

Help, please.

Can you describe what exactly you are doing? As far as installing programs, you can use synaptic, which is the package manager, or install packages from the command line using apt-get. If you can't find a certain program via the package manager, then just download the source code and install from source. Wine and libre office are both available via synaptic.

Hope this helps,

Josh

Thanks for your response. I can't find them in synaptic or I don't know how to search for them. A search for 'wine' and 'libreoffice' nets 0 results. I also used apt-get install and got an error message.

I have no idea of how to 'install the source code and install from source.' - its kind of the basis of my question. Could you elaborate on that?

a bit of advice
If MS Office is a 100% MUST USE ( and OpenOffice or LibreOffice will NOT DO )
then run MS office 2010 on Windows 7 !!!!

MS office and wine do not mix well .

In case of word (97/XP) format. the Open-Office changes the formats for them.

In regards to your problem of not being able to install anything, start by having a look at this thread in the pclinux-os forum. It looks like the repository mirrors changed location and you may need to manually point APT to the new location. If you are still pointing to the wrong one, this could explain your 0 hits.

Normally, installing software is rather easy and with apt, amounts to either using a GUI tool or typing 'apt-get install <application>' from the command line. Of course this will need to be run with root level privilege, either as the root user or prefixing the command with sudo. You shouldn't have to download and install from source, unless you want to create a customized version of a program.

I do hope you get your problem resolved as I would hate for you to feel that you have to return to Windows, feeling Linux is too hard. It really isn't and it is generally a lot easier. Unfortunately, sometimes you do run into problems and they can be really frustrating and trying to solve them can be intimidating. Part of that may be that Linux generally tells you what is wrong, even if the error message seems like a bunch of nonsense. Fortunately, with the message, a search engine and / or a forum will more often than not achieve a fast resolution. Compare that to "that operation did not work, contact your system administrator" that is the default Windows response.

Noway2 - your answer was perfect! Thank you so much.

As for using MS OS and MS Office - I have those but as I am moving part of my work to a desktop I decided that I need to work in an appropriate Linux system for political reasons - kind of like practicing what I preach. It's a boycott of MS and familiarizing myself enough with an OS and corresponding apps so that I can advocate. Honestly, the stuff has to open up enough at some point to allow novice users to be able to not choose MS. That seems to be right now for me.

I'd run OpenOffice instead of libreoffice.

I'd look at distrowatch.com for the top 20 or so distros.
Run them in a virtual machine to get a idea of how they do. A good disto has a way to install apps. The big ones may be Ubuntu/Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse and Debian. Slackware has a following too and of those many are clones. I won't suggest a bsd for a beginner.