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I wanted to try out a few Linux applications, so just installed Ubuntu as a VMware virtual machine within Windows.
VMware prompted me to install the VMware tools, and put a virtual CD-rom on the Ubuntu desktop, containing both an rpm and a tar.gz archive. Couldn't work out how to do anything with the rpm file, so I managed to extract the tar.gz archive into a folder on the desktop, and with the help of Google, worked out that I needed to open a Terminal window, cd into the appropriate directory, and use sudo to execute a Perl install script. And it worked fine.
I'm aware that it's possible to easily install a vast variety of applications via Applications > Add/Remove or other flavours of package manager. And that it's not possible for every app can be found here.
I used the command prompt quite a bit back in the DOS days, which is how I guessed the cd command. I also understand that such an operation needs elevated privileges, thus the sudo command.
My question is why the operation needs the use of a command prompt at all - why can I not double click on an install script file, and then be prompted to supply extra credentials if required? Or right-click and 'Run as root', or some other operation within the GUI?
Please don't take this as a "Why isn't Linux more like Windows" rant - I'm genuinely interested in any answers.
Not an answer, but be aware that the linux command line is far more powerful than the DOS one. It's not easy to learn, but once you get used to it, it's very productive for certain types of things. – Peltier – 2009-09-18T18:47:56.703