How do I install a .tar.gz (or .tar.bz2) file?

The first thing you need to do is extract the files from inside the tar archive to a folder. Let's copy the files to your desktop. You can extract an archive by right-clicking the archive file's icon inside your file browser and pressing the appropriate entry in the context menu. Extracting the archive should create a new folder with a similar name. e.g. program-1.2.3. Now you need to open your terminal and navigate to that directory using the following command:

cd /home/yourusername/Desktop/program-1.2.3

Make sure you read a file called INSTALL, INSTALL.txt, README, or something similar if one was extracted. You can check if such a file exists from the terminal by using the ls command. The file can be opened and read with the command:

xdg-open INSTALL

Where INSTALL is the name of your file. This file will contain the right steps to follow to continue the installation process. Usually, the three "classical" steps are:

./configure
make
sudo make install

You may also need to install some dependencies if, for example, running configure prompted you with an error listing which dependencies you are missing.

You can also use checkinstall instead of make install.

Remember that your mileage may vary.

You cannot "install" a .tar.gz file or .tar.bz2 file. .tar.gz files are gzip-compressed tarballs, compressed archives like .zip files. .bz2 files are compressed with bzip2. You can extract .tar.gz files using:

tar xzf file.tar.gz

Similarly you can extract .tar.bz2 files with

tar xjf file.tar.bz2

If you would like to see the files being extracted during unpacking, add v:

tar xzvf file.tar.gz

Even if you have no Internet connection, you can still use Ubuntu's package management system, just download the .deb files from http://packages.ubuntu.com/. Do not forget to download dependencies too.

For an easier way to install packages offline, see the question How can I install software offline?.

How you compile a program from a source

1. Open a console
2. Use the command cd to navigate to the correct folder. If there is a README file with installation instructions, use that instead.

3. Extract the files with one of the commands

   • If it's tar.gz use tar xvzf PACKAGENAME.tar.gz
   • if it's a tar.bz2 use tar xvjf PACKAGENAME.tar.bz2

4. ./configure

5. make
6. sudo make install (or with checkinstall)

Download a package from the software sources or the software center.

If you install a package via the software sources and not downloading the package on your own, you will get new updates to that package and install them via the Update Manager.

You could just install MYPACKAGE by typing in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install MYPACKAGE

or by using the software center and searching for MYPACKAGE. But if it's not there go with the source.

This is only for .tar.* files which have the code pre-compiled but packed into a tar file.

Okay, this is a fairly challenging task for a beginner, but just follow my instructions, and it should be fine.

First off, download the .tar.* file, and save it. Don't open it. (In these examples, I'll be installing the Dropbox Beta build, because I was going to install it anyway, so I figured that I might as well document the installation.)

After you've downloaded your file, (assuming that you saved it to Downloads,) type the following:

cd Downloads
sudo cp dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.5.36.tar.gz /opt/

NOTE: use the name of whatever file you downloaded. (e.g., for the Firefox Nightly 19.0a1 64-bit build, you would type sudo cp firefox-19.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 /opt/)

Now, change to the /opt/ directory, extract the program, and remove the old file:

cd /opt/
sudo tar -xvf dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.5.36.tar.gz
sudo rm -rf dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.5.36.tar.gz

(again, use the name of the downloaded file. Don't forget the extension.)

Okay, check to see what the extracted folder is called:

ls -a

you'll get something like this:

james@james-OptiPlex-GX620:/opt$ ls -a
.  ..  .dropbox-dist
james@james-OptiPlex-GX620:/opt$

Okay, in our example, we installed Dropbox, and the only folder there is called .dropbox-dist. That's probably the folder we want, so plug that in to the next step (add a / to the end, since it's a folder.):

sudo chmod 777 .dropbox-dist/

Okay, it's now marked as executable, so it's time to create a symbolic link (this is what allows you to run it from the Terminal):

sudo ln -s /opt/.dropbox-dist/ /usr/bin/dropbox

NOTE: this is sudo ln -s /opt/{FOLDER_NAME}/ /usr/bin/{PROGRAM_NAME}!!! Be sure that {PROGRAM_NAME} is replaced with the simplified, lower-case version of the program's name (e.g., for Firefox Nightly, type firefox-nightly; for the uTorrent server, type utserver. Whatever you type here will be the command that you use whenever running the program from the Terminal. Think of /usr/bin/ as like the PATH variable on Windows systems.)

Okay, you're done. The program is now installed and runnable from the Terminal.
What's this? You say you want to run it from the launcher, AND you want it to have an icon? No problem!

This part is fairly simple:

gksu gedit /usr/share/applications/dropbox.desktop

NOTE: If you're installing OVER a previous installation, use ls -a /usr/share/applications and search for pre-existing .desktop file. Plug that file's name in instead.

Now, here's where you create the icon. Here's good template; edit it appropriately.

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Firefox Nightly
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer
Exec=firefox-nightly
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/firefox/icons/mozicon128.png
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=NewWindow;

[Desktop Action NewWindow]
Name=Open a New Window
Exec=firefox-nightly -new-window
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

You may want to leave off the MimeType option completely. That could be very bad if you didn't.

Now, click "Save", close it out, and you're in business!

First things first

It is generally not advised to download and install applications from the internet files. Most applications for Ubuntu are available through the "Ubuntu Software Center" on your system (for example, K3B ). Installing from the Software Center is much more secure, much easier, and will allow the app to get updates from Ubuntu.

That said, how to install tar packages

The best way is to download the tar.bz2 and tar.gz packages to your system first. Next is to rightclick on the file and select extract to decompress the files. Open the location of the folder you extracted and look for the Readme file and double click to open it and follow the instruction on how to install the particular package because, there could be different instruction available for the proper installation of the file which the normal routine might not be able to forestall without some errors.

First of all it is important to install the package build-essential, it contains all programs needed to compile on your own.

After reading the INSTALL file as stated above and fulfilling the prerequisites you can do the magic.

./configure && make && sudo make install

It is difficult to answer specifically, as each software may have a different build process, even if they are archived as a TAR/GZ

What I can say for most source codes that I know of is that you will first need to extract the tarball archive into a folder of your choice. Then most source codes rely on the AUTOCONF and MAKE programs, so you will need to use the following commands :

./configure
make

To build your binaries, and then :

make install

To install it in the system.

"./configure" uses the autoconf mechanism to retrieve information on your system, and prepare the build scripts in the source file in order to build the appropriate binaries compatible with your installation. "make" will invode the build itself, that will create the binaries out of the source code. "make install" will then copy the binaries, documentation, configuration file, etc. into the appropriate folders of your system so that the software is available to the users.

It is a very basic explanation, the real answer is : read the documentation provided with the source code... Only there you will know exactly how to build it.

You should always try to install software from repositories whether it's official, a PPA/any other unofficial repository. That way, you'll get all stable release, security and new feature updates while you install other system updates. Another advantage is that you don't need to worry about building, dependencies and harder uninstallation (since the application won't appear in synaptic) with tar files.

For example, you can install mysql by installing mysql-server package.

If you really want to use tar files, the common process is to run (make install may require sudo):

./configure
make
make install

Please note that some of the above commands may not be necessary, please refer to any readme files in the tar file or try to run ./configure --help

Files with the extension tar.bz2 are what is commonly known as a compressed tarball. Other examples are .tar.gz (more common) and .tgz.

You can extract this file with...

tar -xvjf file.tar.bz2

This will extract the files from the tarball into the directory you are currently in and should create a new directory there with in that the files from the tarball.

Short explanation on the options:

• -x : extract
• -v : verbose: show what is being extracted
• -j : type of compression, in this case bzip2
• -f : 'next comes the filename'

This is probably not enough though. Depending on what it is it could have a complete compiled setup and you need to cd into the new directory and start an executable. It could also contain the source to a program that you need to confire, make, make install. Generally (ie. I would assume) it should contain a readme that explains what to do next.

Warning:

Installing software like this will NOT install any dependencies and will complain if you try to install a tarball before you installed these dependencies. Use a website or the file itself to find out if there are dependencies and install those first. But always always always first try to find a .DEBian installation file or a link to a ppa so you can use ubuntu software center.

If you are trying to install the gimp plugins you skipped parts of the installation process mentioned in this link.

wget ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/babl/0.1/babl-0.1.10.tar.bz2
tar -xvf babl-0.1.10.tar.bz2
cd babl-0.1.10/
./configure
make
sudo make install

and you will also need gegl:

wget ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gegl/0.2/gegl-0.2.0.tar.bz2
tar -xvf gegl-0.2.0.tar.bz2
cd gegl-0.2.0/
./configure
make
sudo make install

Before downloading the files with wget visit the website and see if it has newer versions. These instructions are from the 3rd of May 2012 so they could be old ;)

From the official website of Linux Mint

Installing from archives (.zip tar.gz, etc.):

These archives generally contain the source of the package. Each of them generally has a different approach to install. I will be discussing a common method which will supposedly work for all of them.

General requirements:

1. flex

2. bison or bison++

3. python

As these archives contains the source, your system needs the required programming languages to compile and build the source. So the general requirement packages stated above may not be sufficient for you. In that case you have to install the required packages through one of the processes #1,#2,#3 (requires internet connection). You can know about the dependencies about your software in a readme file included in the archives.

Steps:

1. open the archives with archive manager by double clicking it, then extract it.

2. code:

cd path-to-the-extracted-folder

3. inside the extracted folder look carefully....

a. If you find a file named configure then

./configure    
make
sudo make install

If the first code fails to execute then run this code before above codes:

chmod +x configure

b. If you find a file named install.sh then

Code:

chmod +x install.sh

./install.sh or sudo ./install.sh (if it needs root permission)

or you can double click it and select run in terminal or simply run.

N.B.: sometimes there is a file, something like your_software_name.sh is found instead of install.sh. For this case, you have to replace install.sh with the correct name in the previous codes.

c. If you find a file named install then

code:

chmod +x install

./install or sudo ./install (if it needs root permission)

or you can double click it and select run in terminal or simply run.

d. If you find a file named make (if there is no configure file) then

code:

make
sudo make install

e. If you still can't find the required files

then it may be in a special folder (generally in a folder named bin). Move to this folder with cd command with the appropriate path and then look again and follow the same process.