When Linux came out, there was nothing much and it was a sort of fascinating in terms of installing programs on a system, especially the first ten years. Typically, you will still see less Linux users than the users of mac and Windows. Linux has always been a toy for nerds especially for the people like programmers and server administrators.
All of the giant software companies cared less about Linux and wrote programs for mac and Windows mostly. So, in order to use a program, you have to be a hunter, hunting down the code you need somewhere from online, download them code and compile in your system. After all of these hard work, you may find an error that the program cannot be run you need more code to run this program and so on.
How is installation managed now?
As you can imagine how frustrating this has been, so there is no wonder why people stuck with mac and Windows. Fortunately, this nuisance has been taking care of over the years and a lot of improvements have taken place since then. The new concept of a package manager you are able to download and completely install the software straight from the command line.
Different distro of Linux uses different package managing system. For Debian-based operating systems like Ubuntu and Mint, package manager APT (Advanced Package Manager) is the tool. For Red Hat-based systems, the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) is used. There are also a bunch of other package managers, but we should know this two in the field that is dominating.
How can you use apt-get/APT?
An apt command is super easy to get started with. Many of the Linux users do not like to use the old school Vi text editor and would prefer something, undoubtedly better one, the VIM text editor. The way this command work is, start with the command and your program names. Let’s say we want to install VIM editor. We would go and run the command like: sudo apt-get update.
This immediately updates the whole package managers, which is good since you will have updated results. Note that step is not necessary but something to keep in mind and run occasionally. Now typing, the following will install the program.
sudo apt-get install vim
Now you are ready to use vim and if there has been any inconvenience during the whole installation process, you will be notified. In case, if you need the latest version of the VIM. You just run: sudo apt-get upgrade vim.
There is nothing much of hassle here, you just need to make sure you know the name of the program you want to install. That is it. You also have a graphical search tool that you can use to search for the program you are looking for. For instance, Ubuntu Software Center.
Make sure to keep your system up-to-date all the time which make sure you are using the stable programs on your system.