In other words, some programs that consist of deb files allow for direct installation, while those that contain many separate deb files typically must be installed through the terminal. Installing deb files comes with varying degrees of difficulty. The usual disclaimers apply: these two programs are only used for illustration purposes, and I’m not endorsing or promoting any particular products in this article.

We’re going to look at the methods to install both Debian (deb) and Tarball (tar.gz) files through the terminal, and the two respective examples that will be used in this tutorial are Dropbox and VeraCrypt. (It certainly did for me when I was starting out!)

Here, I explain how to install two particular types of extensions that often give newbies to Linux quite a headache. However, installations in Linux can regularly get more complicated than this, in that it’s often necessary to install programs directly from the source code. For instance, if a user wanted to install GIMP through the Software Manager, it would simply be a matter of locating the program and installing:

In a nutshell, the Software Manager allows for easier installation of a variety of programs by simply searching for the program available, and then installing it from the manager. For those of you who are new to Linux, chances are you’ll be familiar with the in-built Software Manager: This particular tutorial uses Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon 64-bit), but the commands provided below are universal to other versions of Linux, such as Ubuntu.

In this quick tutorial, I explain how to install programs in Linux using terminal commands.

Install deb linux