Where does software go?

[NickWelder]

I downloaded REALbasic and uncompressed it to the desktop. When I tried moving the folder to "Applications/Development Tools" it gave an error saying I can't do that.

So where do I put software? I don't want to have to create a folder on my desktop for all my downloaded software. There are so many confusing named folders on Linux and since I am new I don't know where to put anything so that I can easily find it again.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[RobinVossen]

Normal Software eg Games/Office tools /usr/bin
System tools /bin or /sbin

[NickWelder]

So how do I make it show up in the desktop menu under applications?

[NickWelder]

btw, it won't let me move it there. No clue why...

[RobinVossen]

Since you have to be root.. (There is a Edit_Post Button)

[NickWelder]

Since you have to be root.. (There is a Edit_Post Button)

Could you explain this in more detail please? Warning, Linux newb.

[RobinVossen]

You have to be the Admin to write in that folder.
if you do "whoami" in a terminal you find out who you are.
If you arnt root you cant write in the system folders.
to become root do "su" or if you want to do one single action as root you can do "su root -c "ACTION"" or "sudo ACTION"
Tip: NEVER stay logged in as root.
Stay root as short as posible.

[daark.child]

Where software is located depends on what the package is. Take a look at the FHS if you need detailed info about the directory structure of Linux and other Unix like OSes.

As for RealBasic, if everything is in one directory, then you need to copy that directory to /opt e.g.

$su -c "cp -r RealBasic /opt/."

You will need to enter roots password. To start realbasic, you can create a shortcut to the command or create a menu entry for it. The command would be something like /opt/RealBasic/somecommand.

[NickWelder]

You have to be the Admin to write in that folder.
if you do "whoami" in a terminal you find out who you are.
If you arnt root you cant write in the system folders.
to become root do "su" or if you want to do one single action as root you can do "su root -c "ACTION"" or "sudo ACTION"
Tip: NEVER stay logged in as root.
Stay root as short as posible.

I tried it as root but it didn't work still.

What is sudo?

Also, why does everybody say to stay out of root when possible. What is wrong with that? I know it is a security issue, but come on, what can happen?

[daark.child]

Also, why does everybody say to stay out of root when possible. What is wrong with that? I know it is a security issue, but come on, what can happen?

Interesting point of view. Regularly logging in as root defeats the whole unix security model. Root has the power to do anything on the system. With this power also comes great responsibility and any slight error can leave you with a broken system. For example, one time I was working on a system and I wanted to permanently delete a folder somewhere in /usr/local and I accidently enter "/ usr/local" as part of the path name. Lucky enough I saw what I had done a few seconds later, but I had already lost all the files in /bin and /boot so I had to reinstall. I could have lost all the data on my system and the filesystems that I had mounted from other systems. There are other reasons why you should minimise logging in as root and most are for security reasons.