I'm sorry to ask such a simple question but every time I think I figure something out or think I'm going somewhere get stopped dead in my tracks. My friend installed linux on my computer and then moved away immediately so I have no one to help me!

I downloaded the webcam program Cheese. I found through some tutorials that I have to copy the folder to the /opt/ folder and the only way to do that is through the terminal. I found this tutorial and still can't manage to copy the folder. These are the problems I run into:

1. I don't know where to open the terminal. I've tried opening it from the extracted Cheese folder in my downloads folder and from the /opt/ folder itself. It opens up but:
2. when I type the command sudo cp -r cheese /opt/ it will ask for modernnewspeak's password. When I try to type this in nothing happens, even though it JUST let me type in the command. I pressed "enter" thinking maybe it was hiding my password and I get the message "cannot stat 'cheese'. No such file or directory"

please tell me what I'm doing wrong! I tried to follow that tutorial and look through the FAQ here but I cannot figure this out. Thank you in advance!

What distro are you running?
e.g. Ubuntu

you can install cheese through software manager in most linux distributions, but if you don't know the password you need to reinstall linux itself.

You will be better off using the Software Center if you are using Ubuntu.
Also, if you are trying to copy the directory cheese, you need to be in the parent directory. If you downloaded it from somewhere, it is probably in the /home/user/Downloads directory so you need to go there first to copy or use the full path in the cp command.

When you type in a password, nothing shows on the screen.

The tutorial you linked to is Linux Mint which is similar to and derived from ubuntu. It's also 2 years old and may not be current.

Apparently, the Linux Mint desktop is supposed to be user friendly.
Isn't there are a 'Menu' button on the bottom left which will show icons of all the apps on the OS?
This should include the terminal.

It's saying it doesn't recognise 'cheese'.
Have you extracted the cheese file? The link you've given says the software needs to be 'decompressesed'. Have you done that?
If not, find the downloaded icon for cheese on your desktop, right click and see if there's any decompression software which will then open up the cheese file.
Then try the copy command.

If there's problems with using the command line, you can always right click on the cheese file, copy, and then paste the file into your /opt/ directory.

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You definitely should not have to mess with downloading packages and copying files around to install cheese. I don't know how you came to this tutorial, but it's not the way you should go at this point. First learn the basics.
Since the tutorial was for linux mint I'll assume you are using Linux Mint.
If you are, installing cheese should be as simple as
It'll ask you for your user password, and you won't see anything while typing it.
If it says something like "command not found" you are not using Linux Mint.
In that case, please post the output of

and

Thank you all for responding! I have Linux Mint Olivia

That's probably why he chose that one, but I'm a little computer impaired. I like your username, by the way. My friend was studied physics and was an intern at the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland when they found it. He said it was the best day of his life partying and getting drunk with 60 year old physicists who had been looking for the thing their entire careers.

I'm sorry, I meant to say I know how to open the terminal, but I didn't know if I had to right click on a specific file or folder and open it from there.


I extracted it, and when I right click I don't see any option to decompress any of the files in the folder.

I tried installing it through the software manager, it said it was installed, but I can't find the program anywhere.

I tried this last and I got a list of commands!

Thank you again for the help.

That would be why you can't install from the Software Center or whatever it is called on Mint. As you can see from the Mint site below, it hasn't been supported for a year hence you will be unable to download and install in the standard manner which you should do to prevent dependency errors.

http://www.linuxmint.com/oldreleases.php

Try typing: cheese in a terminal. Or try whereis cheese to find where it is if it is installed.

The menu also might have a search function. I would guess it gets installed in the section called multimedia though...

Yes, well they've said they've found it, but they're very quiet right now. We'll have to wait and see if this will help produce a new Einstein.

Yes, that's because you've already extracted (decompressed) it.
You're trying to open the terminal from the correct location where the cheese file is.
Instead you should open the terminal and move your 'working directory' to the correct directory where cheese is located.

For example, if the cheese file is in /home/user/Downloads, then I would do this:
Open terminal, do sudo [enter] and input your password. Then:
i.e. Go to the beginning
i.e. Go to Downloads directory which has cheese in it.
i.e now do the copy command.

@Higgsboson: While your instructions are not technically wrong, this is not the procedure that the OP should follow to install cheese. Cheese is in the standard repos, and presumably he already installed it but cannot find it now.
We should stop giving him instructions about the "wrong" approach, that will only cause confusion.

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Yes, but I'm wondering if the OS is looking at the newly downloaded cheese file and thinking it's a full-blown program.
If the cheese program is in the standard repos of Linux Mint, then the OP can simply delete the downloaded cheese file.
Then open terminal as sudo and:
http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.co.uk...plication.html
This should work.

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You should update your Linux Mint. Either go to 13 since it's a LTS and supported until 2017, or got with he newest which is version 17.1

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Definitely 17.1, which is also LTS and supported until 2019.

Thank you again everyone for taking the time to help.

I did this, it's in usr/share/cheese, but it's just a bunch of files, no program.

Judging by how helpless I am trying to install this one program, is there any way I'd be able to upgrade to Mint 17.1 on my own? Or is it time to take out a craigslist ad looking for someone who can?