Re: Really have to use .deb to install anything?
>Do you really have to use a .deb installer file for every program you want
>to install?
>
>Thing is that I accidently downloaded the wrong netscape (v4.2 or something
>similar) and it was 8 megs long so it took 2 hours on my humble 14.4
>
>Anyway, it wouldn't work because the .deb installer is for 3.01 so I got
>that version (only 2 megs) and it worked.
>
>I'm sure that if I had a .deb installer for v4.2 (or whichever it is) then
>it would work in Debian, but we have to wait for a .deb file don't we??
>
>So is there a way of installing a program in a tar.gz file without a .deb
>file? All gunzip gives me is the filename of the zip file minus the .gz bit.
>In DOS there's quite a nice zip utility called pkware which unzips a package
>of files which includes an executable installer. Surely that's a much better
>way of doing things?
>
>Also, this may detract some people from debian linux or indeed any of the
>linux distributions in favour of Win95 + NT + DOS, because you can't get the
>latest version of anything, and many Win95 + NT + DOS people are very much
>concerned with getting the very latest version of a program such as
>netscape, but with linux they'll have to install an older version of
>everything unless it's supported as a patch or comes with a .deb file.
>
>Does the new replacement for dselect do this??
>
Well, firstly there's a 4.2 debian installer package, which you could
have downloaded instead. Secondly, if you type tar xvzf <filename>.gz,
it should unzip it properly.
Graham Pople (graham@jalna.demon.co.uk)
SNES emulators at Emulation One (http://www.jalna.demon.co.uk/index.htm)
All emulators at E1 Newsletter (http://www.jalna.demon.co.uk/e1news.htm)
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: