Quite often, it is not possible to find ready-made installation deb packages on the Internet, and the required version of the program may not be available in the standard repositories of Linux OS distributions. Therefore, you yourself have to resort to assembling the application from source codes. The latter are distributed in special archives of the tar.gz or tar.bz2 format.
Go to the folder containing the required archive
This installation of tar.gz is done using the "checkinstall" command. First, you need to build an installation deb package from the code. So, if the main command is not installed, then you need to write in the terminal: "sudo apt-get install checkinstall". After that, you need to go to the folder where the desired archive is located, using the command “cd directory_program_source_code”.
In this case, the installation is from tar.gz, so it needs to be unzipped with "tar -zxf programname.tar.gz" or "tar -jxf programname.bz2", respectively.
To achieve the desired result, you can also extract files with the archive manager. It is worth noting that for more convenient work on the command line, a wonderful TAB button was invented, which allows you to automatically complete complexnames of folders, files or archives. To do this, it is enough to enter only the first letters of the name.
Configuration of program source codes for your distribution
In simple terms, installing tar.gz necessarily involves configuration, which means setting up files with the desired text for a specific operating system. After such an action, a file is created that describes the system configuration. For such purposes, the “./configure” command was invented. The OS itself does not change in any way after this, so the command is completely safe and will not damage the stability of the system.
Also, the author of the application may wish to complete the installation keys, so to view the necessary instructions from the creator, you can type "./configure –help" or open the readme or install file, installing tar.gz archives all this includes. This stage is the most difficult, because in order to properly complete the process, you need to install all additional dependent packages. Therefore, if the installation of the configuration stopped in the middle of the process, then you need to add the necessary packages to the system. At the same time, all the names of the necessary libraries and packages are indicated in the terminal. So, having a good understanding, you can easily navigate in such settings.
Building deb packages
The previously mentioned "checkinstall" program is just for creating and installing the necessary packages for various distributions, for example, deb packages that are widely used in an OS such as ubuntu.
Installing tar.gz ultimately boils down to just that. The "–D" key is added to specify the exact assembly type. That is, the whole command looks like this: "sudo checkinstall -D". All further installation and location of the program will take place in the same folder. To remove the program, you can use standard tools such as Aptitude remove, Aptitude purge, Synaptic. The described installation of tar.gz is not the only way, but may be the preferred way for many users. Nevertheless, you need to be very careful and attentive, as everywhere there are pitfalls.
