Installing a program downloaded as a .tgz [duplicate]

How to install a program with the.tgz extention?

Solution 1:

• .tgz is an archive like zip or rar.
• Right click on the file and select Extract Here.
• cd to the extracted folder.
• Then type ./configure
• To install type make and then make install.
• There will be a Read me file with instruction on how to install the file.
• However the installation will differ based on the different packages.
• So before installing the .tgz files i would strongly advice you to look at the read me file.
• But installing software not in the software centre can be tricky and will not always work without some advanced knowledge.

Solution 2:

As karthick87 already pointed out installing software from source tarballs can be difficult for less experiences users.

It is always better to have software loaded from a ppa or install it from a DEB package if this is available. Maybe this is also the case for your software? Then you could use the software center or synaptic for a safe installation. Further reading on how to install software can be found in the Community Wiki.

Solution 3:

A .tgz file is just a compressed file, like a .zip. It can contain anything, so the installation method could be very different from one program to another:

• Quite often they are just source code, awaiting to be compiled, it's usually quite complex, much more than what karthick87 suggested.
• Other times it contains some kind of installer that you should run like windows, like firefox downloaded from mozilla site.
• Sometimes you are expected decompress it to a folder and just run the program from there, this is quite usual with java programs.

There is no a simple rule that will cover all the possibilities. But one thing is always true, programs installed outside the Software Centre are liabilities.