Dear reader,

I recently built my very first computer, and was extremely pleased with the results hardware wise. Finally I had to decide whether or not to spend $100+ on an operating system that attempts to coddle me like a little baby. So I converted to Debian Lenny! ( this must be what it feels like to be a new AA member confessing a months worth of Sobriety) So anyway, enough rambling, my question is simple, as I've been familiar to nothing but Windows my entire life, I'm not used to using aterminal to download/install packages. Due to this I have spent the past week googling how to unpack .tar.gz and how to install packages using aptitude, etc etc etc. I've finally given up and accepted that I need help. I haven't managed to install a single thing despite hours of frustration, there are two items in particular that I've been trying to install this week

1) Compiz Fusion (everybody likes a pretty 3D desktop)
2) Adobe Flash Player ( The instructions look simple, but are vague enough to be misconstrued)

If anyone would be so gracious as to offer up a step by step, walkthrough written specifically to help a newbie out, for either of these, your time would be much appreciated. I can answer any questions needed should someone be interested.

Thank you for your time,That one Kid (Cole)

Assuming gnome here:

At the top of your screen, you should see the word "System". Click that, then "Administration" then "Synaptic Package Manager". You'll get a GUI to manage your package installation/removal. You should use the packages in Synaptic first and only if your package is not available should you try resorting to downloading from other sources.

Cole, welcome to Debian -- and thanks for the humorous introduction. :-) Software installation is different in fundamental ways on Linux vs. Windows.

In windows, it is common to download a .exe or .msi executable from some webpage on the Internet through your browser, then run that program, and go through a graphical dialog that asks you a bunch of questions.

In Debian, in general, you don't do any of that. Almost everything in the world is in a Debian package repository, and you can download (from the internet), and install software with one simple command:

Compiz Fusion (see http://wiki.debian.org/Compiz):
The package manager will locate, download and install any other software components that are needed to support that package.

Flash player is in the nonfree repository, since its not open source. So, you need to add the nonfree repository to your package managers repository list.

See http://linuxappfinder.com/addrepo.

You should probably update your local package list to include the new repository:

Then you can do the same thing as you did with Compiz:

In general, you always want to use the package manager -- and don't want to install .deb packages directly, and quite certainly (unless you cant find it in the repositories) don't want to manually download, build, and install code from tarballs (unless you have no other choice.)

Happy Debianing.

Yes gnome, sorry I forgot to mention that. Thank you for the quick response however I don't seem to have the synaptics package manager, or if I do I just can't find it. I'm not completely averse to the terminal, just not used to it yet, would you have any other suggestions?

Thank you for your help, I have one more question which I hope might be answered though, when I downloaded the .tar.gz of the flashplayer from the site the instructions said to unpack the file, for future reference, do you know what the command for doing so would be?

Don't do it that way. It's a bad habit, and you're going to end up with a sloppy unmaintainable system if you do that often.

To answer your question for purely educational purposes, though:

But use the package manager.

To unpack:

tar -zxvf file.tar.gz

note that the same file format is denoted by the tgz extension ie file.tgz

If you get a file ending in bz2 (or bz), use a j instead of z in the unpack eg

tar -jxvf file.bz2

gz = gzip compression
bz = bzip compression

http://linux.die.net/man/1/tar
http://linux.die.net/man/1/gzip
http://linux.die.net/man/1/bzip2

As above though, only use those for data files. Do all your installs via the pkg mgr.

Thank you all for your help, especially you Mr. Williams, I am in your debt for this one. Another weeks worth of headaches successfully avoided.

Are you sure you are using gnome? Synaptic should be there unless you've removed it. Assuming it's not, then you can install it from a terminal with:
Added:
Come to think of it, it used to be under Applications->System Tools. So you might want to check there first.

Actually, i think there are valid reasons for more advanced users to avoid a package manager .for example:when you use a package manager, it will update all dependencies including optional ones.
But for a newbie, use a package manager4

A couple of points in this thread:

Sudo is not enabled by default in Debian as it is with the *buntu's.
So normally you'd use su.

For Lenny the flashplugin is in Backports' repository:

http://packages.debian.org/lenny-bac...plugin-nonfree
http://backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php

As Synaptic is a front end to apt-get i fail to see how dependency resolution differs between the two?.
However you can configure apt to not install recommended and suggested packages.

http://wiki.debian.org/Synaptic

My preference is for using aptitude from cli.
Or are you referring to to a 'source' distro without dependency resolution?.