synaptic can't see some packages

[caminoix]

whenever i download a package (.tar.gz in most cases), i try to install it with synaptic but only sometimes does it see it. very often, when i start search it just returns no results.
how can i help it?

[lakerdonald]

AFAIK synaptic is a frontend to APT, so I don't see how you'd use it for .tar.gz packages anyway?

[caminoix]

well, sometimes it does work. so what is it for? for .deb only?
example: i got panda antivirus (.tgz in this case), and there's only a couple of files grouped in the following folders: etc, usr, var. i copied the files to the folders on my disk, but it just doesn't work. i thought synaptic would be a help, but it can't see it

[lakerdonald]

what doesn't work? the program? I think you'd need to use pkgconfig or pkginstall for that.

[jaboua]

.tgz-files are useally slackware-packages and should as lakerdonald suggested, be installed with slackwares package-manager _OR_ be converted to a .deb-package with the command "alien".

.tar.gz-files are useally compressed sourcecode, and should be decompressed and compiled like this:

tar -zxf package.tar.gz
./configure
make
su -c "make install"