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2

This question already has an answer here:

How to install a program with the.tgz extention?

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marked as duplicate by Jorge Castro, Eric Carvalho, Kevin Bowen, Basharat Sialvi, Radu Rădeanu Jun 6 '13 at 3:27

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.
up vote 8 down vote
  • .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.
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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 9:03
    
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
up vote 3 down vote

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.

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up vote 2 down vote

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.

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