Re: geting started in Ubuntu

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

This is slightly offtopic for this list, but I'll answer anyways.

For Ubuntu-specific questions, as these almost are, you should use
Ubuntu's forums and maybe IRC channels (although I personally find the
#ubuntu channel too noisy to be useful).

On 03/10/2007, Doug Stewart <address@hidden> wrote:
> first question :
>  from ubuntu's package loader I cant find Octave.

There are several package managers in Ubuntu. The Adept package
manager (it's called add/remove programs in the menu) is the one
that's intended to best serve almost all users. An Octave user is
relatively rare in the world, as are mathematicians in general. :-)
You'll need a slightly more advanced package manager, called Synaptic.
If you can't find it in the menus ("Synaptic software manager" or
something like that), then just open a console and do "sudo synaptic".

Octave is in Ubuntu's Universe repository (Universe is the free Debian
packages that the Ubuntu developers simply copied from Debian without
any promise of support). You will have to enable Ubuntu's Universe to
be able to install Ubuntu. As I recall, both Synaptic and Adept in
Ubuntu have intuitive enough mechanism for enabling the Universe
repository.

>  I think the the Debian  package might work

It's best not to mix Debian and Ubuntu packages. Although you often
can do it without risk, indeed, they often are the very same packages,
you can also run into many problems if you do this. Avoid it. Use
Ubuntu packages with Ubuntu and Debian packages with Debian.

> Is there a running executable that I can get?

It's called a "binary" in the free world. :-) Because historically
almost everything that doesn't have to run code in the Unix-like world
is text, and if it isn't text, it's a binary. Also why the .txt file
extension in the Unix-like world is about as descriptive as the .file
extension.

And if you mean if there is an installer in the Debian website that
you can download and click a few things to get it running, no. That's
what the package managers are like.

Debian packages, which is what the Ubuntu and Debian package managers
download and install, have the .deb file extension. But you almost
never want to manually download and install .debs yourself. Always use
your package manager.

> If not then how do I compile the ones that I downloaded?

There are ways to compile the Debian source packages yourself, but you
probably don't want to do that. If you're going to be compiling Octave
in order to contribute to Octave development, work directly with the
upstream sources, the ones from octave.org. How to do this is a
different question altogether.

Good luck,
- Jordi G. H.