Downloading and installing programs from the Internet

You need to right click the file and mark it as executable. You can do this in terminal using:

chmod +x filename.bin

You will need to use cd to (c)hange (d)irectory to the directory you downloaded the file to first. You can then run it with:

sudo ./filename.bin

Again change the filename to the one you downloaded. Case sensitive too like all of linux is.

Thanks for the quick reply!

Not to be dense, but *which* file am I supposed to mark as executable? What I am downloading comes as a folder, with many subfolders.

Does the .bin extension identify the folder/file as residing in Downloads?

The file extension doesn't identify the location of the file. It will more than likely be there though. If you have many subfolders then you will more than likely find the program is ready to roll. Just find a command which sounds like it launches the app. I suggest you read the text files and readmes in the data you have.

in the nwb folder, there is a file called "nwb". Try double clicking it. On my machine it took a while to start up (~20 seconds).

If this does not work, go to a terminal, naviagate to the directory, then type "chmod u+x nwb" to mark it as executable (it already is, so this should be fine anyway), then type "./nwb"

Thanks to you both -- it opened fine (after I installed Java Runtime....)

To wrap this up:
The NWB app doesn't appear anywhere in the Applications dropdown (nor does another package I just installed). How do I add them?
Can I now delete the nwb file from the Downloads folder?
Where do the program files now reside?

You can delete the .tar.gz file, thats fine, but deleting the extracted folder will delete the program, which resides entirely in the nwb folder.

As you say, it needs the java runtime, so it is using the installed version on your system.

Installing the program will be a bit tricky, so you are probably best

I believe the the applications dropdown is controlled by the use of a so-called "desktop file", which resides in /usr/share/applications -- whilst it is possible to modify an existing one to match, but requires a bit of know-how. The specification is here: http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/

The referenced icons are stored in /usr/share/pixmaps/ , and you should not specify a file extention (eg .png).

Its a bit crap, but thats the way it goes... Whilst it is possible to install software not in the repos, you have to have some idea of how to do it -- this requires a bit of patience and reading.

Thanks -- I actually just figured out how to write a script for use with Application Launcher, so the specific issue with the NWB application is taken care of. But there is an larger issue:

In setting up my computer, I've been downloading various programs --some through the software center, and some by adding to Software sources. I download the files as instructed, but don't know what do do next. For example, for the statistical package R, in software sources I added, per the instructions (http://cran.r-project.org/)

        deb http://www.revolution-computing.com/cran/bin/linux/ubuntu lucid/

and then in the terminal:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install r-base

and everything ran fine. But then what? How do I launch it? Similarly, how do I launch MySQL Server (gotten though the Software Center) or Python? What is the general process for finding the command for launching a program that doesn't install itself on the application dropdown?

Many thanks,

Bradley

OK -- I've figured most of the above out...Thanks, everyone.