Chapter 12. Installing, Updating, and Compiling Programs
In this chapter, we show you how to upgrade software on your system. Although most Linux distributions provide some automated means to install, remove, and upgrade specific software packages on your system, it is sometimes necessary to install software by hand.
Non-expert users will find it easiest to install and upgrade software by using a package system, which most distributions provide. If you don't use a package system, installations and upgrades are more complicated than with most commercial operating systems. Even though precompiled binaries are available, you may have to uncompress them and unpack them from an archive file. You may also have to create symbolic links or set environment variables so that the binaries know where to look for the resources they use. In other cases, you'll need to compile the software yourself from sources.
Upgrading Software
Linux is a fast-moving target. Because of the cooperative nature of the project, new software is always becoming available, and programs are constantly being updated with newer versions.
With this constant development, how can you possibly hope to stay on top of the most recent versions of your system software? The short answer is, you can't. In this section, we talk about why and when to upgrade and show you how to upgrade several important parts of the system.
When should you upgrade? In general, you should consider upgrading a portion of your system only when you have ...
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