Question about Ubuntu / Linux program installtion

Speedstack79 · February 5, 2014

I am thinking about installing Ubuntu alongside with Windows but I got a question about program installations, the last time I installed Ubuntu I tried getting the AMD driver for my GPU, and I am guessing I had to do some script (that I could not find an easy tutorial on what script to type and what program to open to type this script) to actually install the driver, is this still a thing? Do you have to type in a script for every program you try to install or just drivers?

roberto++ · February 5, 2014

in my experience with ubuntu, it is best to use terminal (AKA command prompt) for everything when possible. You can then take your terminal skills and use them on mac and other linux variants, good skill to have.

I had some bad experiences attempting to install java using GUI interface, and terminal works like magic as long as you can find the repository and package.

just note, that installing windows and Ubuntu side by side will not be a simple install Ubuntu and everything works. You may get to a point where the computer only boots to Ubuntu and not windows anymore, and start to freak out like I did the first time. This is fixable, but will take some time to understand and most likely be linked to the grub loader that Ubuntu uses.

It has been too long since I last had to modify the boot configuration for both windows and ubuntu, as I now run VMs of Ubuntu instead.

I am thinking about installing Ubuntu alongside with Windows but I got a question about program installations, the last time I installed Ubuntu I tried getting the AMD driver for my GPU, and I am guessing I had to do some script (that I could not find an easy tutorial on what script to type and what program to open to type this script) to actually install the driver, is this still a thing? Do you have to type in a script for every program you try to install or just drivers?

rashdanml · February 5, 2014

If you use xorg-edgers to install proprietary drivers, then you don't need to worry about driver updates. Simply typing in "sudo apt-get update" should take care of everything.

Same goes for if you use open source drivers. "sudo apt-get update" updates packages if there's an update.

https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

"sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" is a bit riskier as it'll also install a newer kernel version, one that may be unstable on Ubuntu. On ElementaryOS for instance, dist-upgrade installs linux-3.5, which causes plenty of troubles (default kernel is 3.2).