Ubuntu - Installing extra software
 

Hey everyone,

I have finally taken the step from Windows to Linux, after getting tired of the poor security, stability and functionality of Windows. Though now I have to learn a new Operating System all over.

The installation went well, most of my hardware was detected and drivers installed. It seems that the screen drivers still needs to be installed.

Now I have downloaded something from the internet, and tried to install it. But when logging into a terminal, and type rpm -i <filename>, I get an error saying command not found.

When I type rp and press tab, all I get is rpcclient, rpcinfo and rpl8, but no rpm.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Kind regards,
Anton Botha

RPMs are for Redhat based distros (Redhat, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse...).

For ubuntu, you need to use apt-get. This program will download the requested package, and any dependencies and install it for you.

Try "apt-cache search <package name>" to find the name of the package, and to see if apt-get knows about it.

Then use "sudo apt-get install <package name>" to install the package. You need to use sudo, because you need root privlledges to install software. You will need to enter your users password.

I hope this helps
--Ian

Hi!

If you want to install the downloaded .deb file without using apt-get, the command is

dpkg -i <filename>

Hey everyone,

Thank you for your replies, I got it sorted out though.

The file I downloaded was .rpm and Ubuntu uses .deb installation files. I got hold of alien and converted the .rpm to a .deb and got it installed.

Thank you so much for your replies.

Kind regards,
Criminal

:newbie:

you may want to check this out


www.ubuntuguide.org/