Silly Question From a Silly Noobie

[JasenTDavis]

Hello. For the last couple of decades I've used Windows. I bought another computer, and decided to turn the old one (which is still damn good) into a linux box.

I installed Debian. So far, so good. Basically, I booted from the cd-rom.

I downloaded three out of the twenty-one disks from the Debian website and burned them to cd's.

I know it's probably easy, but how do I install those other programs from the cd-roms? I put the cd for Debian 2 into the cd-rom, and then opened it in the hopes I would find an .exe to double-click, but I know that's not how linux works.

What do I do, now? Sorry for the silly question, but learning how to install programs is a good place to start!

Thank you!

[jledhead]

familiarize yourself with apt
APT HOWTO

basically it comes down to (from a cmd prompt):

apt-get update
apt-cache search name_of_software
apt-get install name_of_software

[JasenTDavis]

Awesome!

How do I tell what software is on the disk? It's hard to figure out which is what.

Thank you for the commands, though.

[JasenTDavis]

Ok, I'm trying to install a word processing program called abiword-2.4.6

The file for it is on my desktop.

I tired typing apt-get install abiword-2.4.6, but I got E: Couldn't find package abiword-2.4.6

What do I do now?

I went into the cd's and found a whole lot of files, but no matter what I did I got the same result, although typing apt-cache search program name is useful for figuring out what the program does. At least that's working.

Thanks!

[bigtomrodney]

apt-get is used for installing software from repositories. It will not install files that aren't within these repositories. If you really want to install a .deb file you can use dpkg but I recommend against using that as it will not be able to resolve your dependencies. Abiword is in the Debian repositories so you should be able to install it using apt-get...unless you are not using an online repository and only have a few of the install discs.

Can you post the contents of your /etc/apt/sources.list ?

[JasenTDavis]

Oh, so that's what I've been doing wrong. My linux computer doesn't have Internet access yet, so I've been installing (or trying to install) programs from the cd's I downloaded, or from a flash drive.

I can see the programs, they are just sitting there on my desktop, but I don't know the process by which one installs the programs. Windows usually has an installation program that does it for you, but I figure with linux there's a command you type out in root, but the tutorials I've read off of the Debian boards all refer to apt-get.

How does one install a program from a cd-rom, or from the desktop?

How do I find out the contents of my /etc/apt/sources.list?

Thank you for your time and patience.

[Manchunian]

Hello Jasen, and welcome to Linux!

In my opinion, you shouldn't be using straight Debian yet. The reason is that it lacks many of the GUI tools newbies like. The transition from Windows to Debian is, in my humble opinion, too steep for most. The Ubuntus are based on Debian, and so share the excellent apt-get tool, but are much simpler to set up; the same goes for Linux Mint. In these distros, for instance, there is a tool that enables you to configure your repositories without you having to touch the command line; also, and perhaps most essentially for you at this point, Internet access is usually available straight away, whereas with Debian you may need to do a bit of work.
For the record, I love Debian and used it for a long time (I still have a Debian partition, just in case). It is faster than Ubuntu and (in my opinion) more reliable. But right now I think you should try something a little more 'newbie friendly' until you get the grasp of some of the fundamental differences between Linux and Windows.
Good luck!

[JasenTDavis]

You bring up a good point. However, the steep learning curve and reliance upon the command line is precisely why I chose Debian. I wanted the challenge; the pure computing experience.

Besides, I've already installed Debian and burned several cd's worth of programs. After getting used to Debian, I plan on installing Enlightenment (once I figure out how to install things).

Between installing an ethernet card (hardware) and installing a few programs (software) I feel that I will get a grasp of some essential basics.

I've read a few tutorials, but I'm one of those types who learn by doing. I've already got a few pointers just from a few of the posts by the experts here. Once I learn to do a few things, I should be on my way.

[Manchunian]

OK, then you're like me! Why have you burned programs on a CD? In Linux (especially with Debian distros) it is rarely necessary to do this. Almost everything is available on the Internet - this is where apt-get comes in. So long as your repositories are set up correctly, you should be able to open a terminal and write (as root) apt-get install name_of_program and Debian will download the program from the repositories and install it; it will also take care of all updates, as well as verifying that the program you want, or any of the dependancies it needs, doesn't clash with your system for any reason. In a word, it is neat! Note, that apt-get has a graphical front-end called Synaptic which is probably easier to use to start with.
If you want us to check your repositories, paste the contents of your sources.list file here. You asked earlier how to do this: well, as you're not writing to the file yet, you can simply run the folllowing command as a normal user:

gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Then copy and paste the contents of the file that opens.

[JasenTDavis]

Yup. I don't see this as a "I own a toaster and I want to plug it in." I see this as a crossword puzzle or a game of chess. I don't mind the adversity. I still have a lot of learning to do, though.

I typed that in to the terminal as root and this is what I got:

#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 CD Binary-1 20080217-11:50]/ etch contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 CD Binary-1 20080217-11:50]/ etch contrib main

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

I don't have an ethernet card yet, so it might have been trying to access the Internet.

What next?