Installing a program downloaded as a .tgz

Question

How to install a program with the.tgz extention?

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 15 '10 at 07:50

12

.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.

answered Dec 15 '10 at 07:50

karthick87

81,947

Yeah, if it is a source tgz, it uses makefiles, he has build-essentials installed, meets all the dependencies, and has all the header files ready. It will be much more complex. – Javier Rivera Dec 15 '10 at 09:03
When i type ./configure it says access is denied. how can i rectify it? – FOSS DIVERSER Mar 28 '11 at 17:45
try sudo ./configure (if you trust the file) – nik90 Mar 28 '11 at 18:08
while trying sudo ./configure same error ( permission denied). Even logging as root didn't work.. – FOSS DIVERSER Mar 28 '11 at 18:15
some software, like python, requires you to call make test and sudo make install after make – 3pitt Aug 04 '19 at 18:48

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:25

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.

Javier Rivera · Answer 3 · 2010-12-15T11:29:56.040

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.

Installing a program downloaded as a .tgz

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