Originally Posted by
perce
.tar are difficult to install because they can be whatever... a tar file is not the equivalent of a .exe file on Windows, as most beginner seem to think, but rather the equivalent of a .zip file. So a .tar can contain a source code to compile (which is usually difficult - how often do you compile on Windows?) or a binary installer, which is usually easy to install, or even something which is not meant to be installed, like a backup of my holiday pictures. This implies that instruction to install the program which is contained in a .tar file change from time to time, because that program is not distributed in Ubuntu's standard format for installing program, which is a .deb.
Finally, and luckily, very few programs come in .tar files, and for most of them .deb files are available. The correct workflow for installing programs is:
1) look in the repository: if the program is there, then a couple of click suffice to install it. This should cover more that 90% of software you need
2) if it is not in the repository, look is the program's download page has
a .deb compiled for Ubuntu: if yes, download it and double click on it. This should cover almost all the rest.
2b) sometimes the download page will not have the .deb file, but other respectable sites like get-deb will have it (but be careful not to install programs from dodgy sources, otherwise all Linux extra protections won't help you against malware)
3) if the program is available only in a .tar file (or .tgz or .tar.gz), download it to your desktop and extract it. That is done by right clicking on the file and choosing "extract here" from the menu. This will create a directory, usually (but not necessarily) with the same name without .tar. Navigate inside that directory and look for a file called README which will contain the instruction on how to install the program.
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