Linux Basic Administration Concepts

Installing Software

In the linux world software comes in three main formats:

• RPM Packages - Files with an .rpm extension, containing binaries for a specific distribution.
• Source code - Files with .tar.gz, .tgz or .tar.bz2 extensions, containing compressed source code of the program.
• Installers - Usually commercial software, which comes with a sinlgle binary that you should run to intall the software.
• Apt - an enhanced installer, which can automatically download and install a program, together with the components it depends on. Comes from the Debian GNU/Linux system.

Originally written by Alon Altman