Week 7: Chapter 14: Installing Software

John George Bauer-Buis
2018-04-28
NET-140-001N

This first section is a synopsis of the chapters using the headings and subheadings from the textbook, with descriptions in my own words.
 
Chapter 14: Installing Software
    •    On GNU/Linux systems, software is normally ultimately installed using a package manager, whether it is controlled directly through the command line or indirectly through a graphical user interface.  Package managers will install dependencies, other packages required to use a package, if they are not already present.  Package managers keep track of what versions of what packages are actually installed, along with which files belong to which package.  You need to have administrator privileges to install, upgrade or remove software.  This is normally accomplished with the su or sudo commands, which require typing retyping your password if you have the appropriate privileges first, for security reasons.
    •    RPM-Based Distributions (Red Hat Derived), such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Yellow Dog (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=yellowdog), etc. use rpm or yum to manage packages. 
    •    DEB-Based Distributions, such as Debian (which originated this package format), Ubuntu  and its variants, and many other distributions, including some Puppy Linux variants, use the Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, as well as aptitude, which is designed to be more user friendly (https://askubuntu.com/questions/347898/whats-difference-of-apt-get-and-aptitude).  These distributions also can access the package manager directly through dpkg. 
    •    Both yum and apt use a similar, more human-readable and user-friendly syntax for commands, while rpm and dpkg are more terse and opaque. 


Observations:
I have manually installed things using apt or aptitude before, such as Spotify, rEFInd (a boot manager for EFI systems) and the official Google Chrome, as well as Steam.  I believe dpkg also has a GUI, although so far I don’t think I’ve used it more than once or twice.  I usually use the *Ubuntu store to install things if possible, since it is easy to search for software in it.

https://www.syncfusion.com/ebooks/linux

I may add to this post at a later date if I discover more useful information that I think I should feature here.