Hi Have been trying to figure out the various methods of installing software on linux systems.
So far have reached here There are 1. Compiling from Source 2. Installing from tar zip pacakages 3. Installing distribution speciic packages like rpm's and deb's 4. Installing via automated mechanisms - apt-get, yum , yast etc. 4. The ease of installing via automated mechanisms makes life very easy - no worries about dependencies and distribution specific issues and such stuff. The only real concern is access to adequate bandwidth. 3. Distribution specific packaging also seems cool - but this is limited only to a few major distributions and sometimes still requires dependencies to be met. 2. Installing for tar zip packages needs some CLI use, as well as to have to attend to all the dependencies but at the same time can be installed on any system (!) 1. Finally compiling from source - really i have no idea what this means - but is it supposed to be the most effective way to compile a package specifically to a particular machine and distribution resulting in a stable package (& system) Obviously nothing can be better than over the net automated installs but one problem is the bandwidth and the other is that some packages are not available for specific distributions. One specific question i had was how do installing from tar zip packages compare to the other methods - since tar zips are what are passed around by the various magazines. Further how would Ubuntu react to a tar zip package installed on an ubuntu system. Apart from this look forward to your (many) comments on software installation. thanks ram -- ubuntu-in mailing list ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in