I need help installing downloaded programs

[exploder]

Try and do a search for a .deb for the application you want to install, .deb packages will install quite painlessly. To use a tar.gz file just right click on it and extract it, then find the executable file to launch the application.

[RedWagon]

It's in the repos. Run

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install scilab

to install it. If you get any errors it might be in one of the repos not enabled by default, just post back and we'll help you with that.
Installing a program by downloading it off a website should be a last resort, anything installed that way cannot be automatically upgraded with Mint install and sometimes isn't as stable as as getting the preconfigured .deb.

[DrHu]

Anyway, I downloaded a program called scilab that I wanted and now I have a file called scilab-5.1.1.bin.linux-i686.tar.gz

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/linux- ... linux.html
--Linux installation methods, .tar, .deb, .rpm etcetera.

In this case
In terminal, check

• apt search scilab
  p libscilab-java - Scientific software package for numerical
  p scilab - Scientific software package for numerical
  apt show scilab
  Package: scilab
  State: not installed
  Version: 5.1-0ubuntu2

If it is in the repository for the distribution, which it is in this case, it is quite often not the latest version, which may or may not work in your system, that would be installing from a source file .tar or a compressed source file tar.gz
--which requires being compiled for your system (which as indicated above may not exactly match, due to some dependencies that might be needed eg. /lib file versions and so on..

[Kaye]

You should edit your original post and put (solved) next to the topic. It's an easy way for us to know when a topic doesn't require further attention