The issue probably is because I am using 3 operating systems at the same time: 1) Windows for Work; 2) Mac as base machine to connect to VDI at work or to use daily for research/entertainment; 3) Linux for University.
And let's face it: I haven't sat that much on my Linux box to do too much in these last few months on this computer, at all... This now changes, and this will be my friend for a month.
In Windows, to install you have to download the executable file or either go to Add/Remove Programs. For uninstalling, you can either choose the Uninstall executable to do all the job for you, or again go back to Add/Remove Programs for a complete cleanup. And for any upgrades, you can select the automatic upgrade that recommends you a new version when this is available.
To be honest, I even don't remember anymore if all these steps are correct, as my virtual machine at work don't allow me to install/uninstall applications freely, as the same for updating them accordingly. I'm relying on the IT guy/tools to do that remotely for me, and this is seemless.
In the Mac instead, you can install the app by just copying the file to your Apps 'icon', which basically copy the file you'll execute to an Applications folder, so you don't have all the files distributed everywhere. For uninstalling it, you just delete the file you execute, and voilà: the app is gone. Any upgrades are made through iTunes.
But in Linux... arghhh! For installing and uninstalling, it might be simpler as you just need to have in your had that the 'installer' is called apt-get, and then you just need to use functions to install and uninstall, if you obviously are 'installing' or 'uninstalling' the application from your box.
Example:
To install app:
apt-get install <app_name>
To uninstall app
apt-get uninstall <app_name>
However, if you want to upgrade your system, things get more complicated. Especially because not always is a very straight forward process, especially if the application you need to use requires different libraries, or you have public key issues to connect to the catalogs to download these libraries for example.
For checking the library, you need to do an apt-get update. This allows you to refresh your library against the global catalog for anything new. When I run this command to write this blog, I managed in fact to get the following error:
This is because under /etc/apt/sources.lists.d folder, I had the following files there:
- google-chrome.list
- playonlinux.list
These are extra libraries that were attached to my original library, and that every time I run apt-get update, these two are attempted to be updated as well, but it seems that the public keys used before are now unexistent for, for some reason.
I could try to sort the issue out, but first I don't want to lose too much time, and secondly, one is for Google Chrome, which if I break it, it's easy to fix. The other one I don't even remember when I did install that in the first place. So I simply decided to deleted these files from there, and after running the command apt-get update again, I didn't get the errors any longer.
However though, when I tried to check if Chrome was still working, I started to get a message asking for my keyring password to be able to use this application properly. I put the password I'm using for accessing to my box, which was the one I remembering setting up (bear in mind that it has been a while that I didn't connect to this box, as mentioned above), and this didn't work.
Therefore, I created another blog for explaining how to fix this issue here.
Once updating the library, then the other step is actually run the apt-get install, to install any new update found. This time I had nothing to upgrade, but once I have and if any issues come up, I'll update this post again.
You can also use the Package Manager for Linux called Synaptic. For installing that, you can run the following:
sudo apt-get install synaptic
sudo synaptic
You can check for any updates by clicking in Reload, and then for downloading and installing, you can use the icon that says Mark All Upgrades.
