Skip to Content
Running Linux, 5th Edition
book

Running Linux, 5th Edition

by Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Matt Welsh
December 2005
Beginner
974 pages
31h 50m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Running Linux, 5th Edition

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 ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Running Linux, Third Edition

Running Linux, Third Edition

Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Lar Kaufman, Matt Welsh
Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Ellen Siever, Stephen Figgins, Robert Love, Arnold Robbins
Linux in Action

Linux in Action

David Clinton
Linux Under the Hood

Linux Under the Hood

Sander van Vugt

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007604Errata Page