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.