Where do programs go when you install them?

[scorp123]

when i install something from synaptic and it successfully downloads where do the programs go to? BEcause i cant seem to find any of the stuff i downloaded from synaptic

Where programs go entirely depends on the program ... might be /usr/bin ... or /opt/ ... or /usr/local/bin ... or /usr/share ... Please be more specific. What did you download? And why do you think it's missing?

Regards,
Scorp123

[antiquexray]

How 'bout this then (because I've had the same problem), once you find the executeble program, can you create a shortcut for the desktop. I know I can drag and drop some programs from the menu bar (Firefox for example), but when it's tuck under urs/bin, or some other obsure place, it would be nice not to have to navigate to it in order to launch it.

[scorp123]

navigate to it in order to launch it.

You don't have to ... you just open a terminal and type its name
Even if you don't know the name:

Let's suppose you didn't remember that the Firefox browser could be invoked just by typing firefox into the terminal ...

- Chances are you remember the first few letters: fi ... type that into a terminal and hit the TAB key a few times: Your super-friendly Linux OS will try to guess what you want and will suggest commands that start with those letters! Please try it!

But what if you even don't remember the name? Chances are you remember what the program was meant for ... e.g. web browsing ... So we ask our super-friendly Linux OS what it can tell us about that topic and what programs it would suggest for that activity:

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apropos web browsing

Results:

• Finance::Quote::Fool (3pm) - Obtain quotes from the Motley Fool web site.
  firefox (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  gnome-www-browser (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  javaws (1) - Java Web Start launcher command
  klinkstatus (1) - a web link validity checker for KDE
  konqueror (1) - Web browser, file manager, ...
  LWP (3pm) - The World-Wide Web library for Perl
  lwp-download (1p) - Fetch large files from the web
  lwp-rget (1p) - Retrieve web documents recursively
  LWP::RobotUA (3pm) - a class for well-behaved Web robots
  LWP::UserAgent (3pm) - Web user agent class
  mozilla (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  mozilla-firefox (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  mozilla-suite (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from Netscape Communicator
  ooweb (1) - OpenOffice.org office suite
  opera (1) - a standards-compliant graphical Web browser
  quanta (1) - a web development environment for KDE
  rrdcgi (1) - Create web pages containing RRD graphs based on templates
  sensible-browser (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  sensible-editor (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  sensible-pager (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  update-ms-fonts (8) - download updated Microsoft Web fonts
  v4lphilips (1) - Philips Webcam driver for INDI telescope control
  w3m (1) - a text based Web browser and pager
  webpng (1) - programs to convert between gd and other graphics formats
  www-browser (1) - a text based Web browser and pager
  x-www-browser (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  libsmbclient (7) - An extension library for browsers and that can be used as a generic browsing API.
  sensible-browser (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  sensible-editor (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  sensible-pager (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing

Firefox is listed as suggestion number #2 ... and there is Opera in the list too. The other suggestions are not that helpful, but sometimes you can get better results by refining what you are looking for, e.g.

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apropos web

Gives this list:

• firefox (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  gnome-www-browser (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  javaws (1) - Java Web Start launcher command
  klinkstatus (1) - a web link validity checker for KDE
  konqueror (1) - Web browser, file manager, ...
  LWP (3pm) - The World-Wide Web library for Perl
  lwp-download (1p) - Fetch large files from the web
  lwp-rget (1p) - Retrieve web documents recursively
  LWP::RobotUA (3pm) - a class for well-behaved Web robots
  LWP::UserAgent (3pm) - Web user agent class
  mozilla (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  mozilla-firefox (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser
  mozilla-suite (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from Netscape Communicator
  ooweb (1) - OpenOffice.org office suite
  opera (1) - a standards-compliant graphical Web browser
  quanta (1) - a web development environment for KDE
  rrdcgi (1) - Create web pages containing RRD graphs based on templates
  sensible-browser (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  sensible-editor (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  sensible-pager (1) - sensible editing, paging, and web browsing
  update-ms-fonts (8) - download updated Microsoft Web fonts
  v4lphilips (1) - Philips Webcam driver for INDI telescope control
  w3m (1) - a text based Web browser and pager
  webpng (1) - programs to convert between gd and other graphics formats
  www-browser (1) - a text based Web browser and pager
  x-www-browser (1) - a Web browser for X11 derived from the Mozilla browser

Trust me ... finding programs is very easy!

[scorp123]

once you find the executeble program, can you create a shortcut for the desktop.

Addition to this: In GNOME if you right click onto a panel or the desktop you should get a menu point "New Application Launcher" or something like that? A dialogue will show up and ask you for the details, e.g. the command needed to start the program. Again, you just need to know the name (which you can find out with the methods described in the previous posting). You don't need to search your harddisk for the specific location of the program.

Another method: Let's suppose you still remember parts of the name of the package you installed, e.g. "thunderbird". How do we find out how this program should be launched? We ask our super-friendly Linux OS to spit out the correct name of the package and of the binary!

So here we go ... first in proper English, then the shell commands so that our LinuxMint actually understands what we want:

Dear "Bea" (or "Barbara" in my case), I know I have a package called "thunderbird"-something on the system, please can you list all installed packages that have the term "thunderbird" in their name?

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dpkg -l *thunderbird*

... returns this:

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Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                              Version                           Description
+++-=============================================
ii  mozilla-thunderbird               1.5.0.8-0ubuntu0.6.10             Mozilla Thunderbird standalone mail client
un  mozilla-thunderbird-enigmail      <none>                            (no description available)
un  mozilla-thunderbird-inspector     <none>                            (no description available)
un  mozilla-thunderbird-typeaheadfind <none>                            (no description available)
un  thunderbird                       <none>                            (no description available)
ii  thunderbird-locale-en-gb          1.5.0.2ubuntu1-3                  Thunderbird English language/region package

Notice the two "ii" next to "mozilla-thunderbird"? This means that this package is installed on the system and therefore it is the package we want to look at!

Dear "Bea", please list the content of that package!

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dpkg -L mozilla-thunderbird

... try it out

Slight variation: Dear "Bea", please show me all installable packages regarding this "thunderbird" thing ...

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apt-cache search thunderbird

... returns a list of packages that have something to do with "thunderbird" ... Please try it out!

All these functions can of course also be used via synaptic ... but the terminal is definitely faster (plus you don't need to be root for these types of package queries).

Regards,
Scorp123

[clem]

And also:

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sudo updatedb; locate firefox

This gives you a list of all the files and folder in your computer which contain the keyword "firefox".

Clem

[scorp123]

And also:

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sudo updatedb; locate firefox

Ah yeah, I forgot to mention the famous which command:

Let's suppose you know that firefox is installed and you know the command to invoke it, but you still want to know where precisely the binary is located:

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which firefox

... returns the full path to the binary:

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/usr/bin/firefox

So once you know the name of a binary it's easy to find out in which directory it is located.

[scorp123]

Hi, I used synaptic to download and install Flightgear flight sim, .
but I can't find it anywhere......it's not in the gui, or in terminal....
even search says no such file or program found....any ideas??
Thanks, Tim

Well ... did you follow my suggestions above? It should now be very easy for you to find out everything you need.

apropos flightgear
dpkg -L flightgear
which flightgear

... and so on.

[scorp123]

Yep, tried all of those...... no joy

OK, are you sure it's installed? Give me the output of this command please -- whatever it says, I need the output:

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dpkg -L flightgear

[scorp123]

/usr/share/doc/flightgear/README

That file up there just looks like it might contain some useful info. Can you take a look at it please? Command:

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more /usr/share/doc/flightgear/README

[scorp123]

I just Googled around and I am pretty sure that this is the main binary: /usr/games/fgfs ... Can you please test what happens if you type this into a terminal?

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/usr/games/fgfs

[scorp123]

can I make a shortcut? Thanks much, Tim

Please see my previous postings. You can easily create a "program launcher", e.g. on your desktop. When GNOME asks you to provide the command needed to launch this then you enter /usr/games/fgfs one more time (and probably the last time ) and voila, from there on it will be enough to click on that icon and flightgear should start ...

[.ee]

when i install something from synaptic and it successfully downloads where do the programs go to? BEcause i cant seem to find any of the stuff i downloaded from synaptic

The same problem here. Probably every newbie has this problem. Perhaps,
user-friendly linux should authomatically add icons of new installed applications to the list of "All Applications" in Bianca "start menu" (what is the linux word for it, btw?).

[JohnH]

Scorpio,

I've been a Linux user for a couple of years now, and mostly avoid terminal when I can, and so I have never come across these commands before. It would have been very handy in the past if I had known them. I will be copying your posts and pasting them in my Linux How To folder. Thank you for your patient explanations to a new Linux user (and a not so new user).

Regards
John

[torque2k]

OK, I understand how to use the above commands. I have a problem with the GNOME menu system in Mint, though. I'm normally a KDE user, so bear with me and my semi-newbness...

I've installed XaraLX, the open-sourced version of Xara Xtreme. It uses an autopackage installer, which seemed to perform perfectly in Mint (I'm using Bianca, BTW). Once installed, I was able to find the app in /usr/bin just fine, and ran it via terminal with /usr/bin/xaralx, no problems, runs great (it wanted ImageMagick, though, but no biggy to install).

However, I was unable to find a menu item in the Graphics section. Xara wasn't in any of the menus for applications. So, fine, I thought, I'll just go into the menu config and add it manually, like I'd do with KDE. Sure enough, there's a menu config for GNOME, and when I started it, interestingly enough, there was an entry in the Graphics section for Xara LX, including a nice custom icon for the app. Right-clicking the entry and selecting Properties... brought up the command line feed, and it shows /usr/bin/xaralx %f, which is what it should be, correct? Even after restarting X, I didn't get it in the menu.

UPDATE: After stripping the Properties... entry to show only 'xaralx %f', it still didn't show up after restarting X (CTRL-ALT-Backspace), BUT when I restarted the whole machine (actually a VM on my MacBook Pro running Parallels), it DID show up. Huh.

Will it be normal for me to have to restart the entire machine/VM when I add packages not added expressly using Synaptic or whatever package manager GNOME uses?