Kubuntu Newbie Experience XI - Installation Notes

Whenever you want to install a program from the Ubuntu repository you do it by typing in your CLI:

sudo apt-get install [program name]

After typing that, you are shown a series of messages and sometimes errors detailing what your PC is doing after you typed that specific command.

I'm a Linux newbie, so for me a good indication of a successful install is you get to see the place where you type commands again and that I don't get to see a negative word before it like: error, could not, don't want to, etc.

A good example of a failed installation is when it shows these:

sudo aptitude install filelight
Password:
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
danny@home:/$_

In this instance you might notice that Kubuntu asks me if another process is using it. What is IT? Whatever IT is, I know that IT is certainly being used by another installation script that I am using - Automatix2.

This also means that it is hard to run two separate installations at the same time if not impossible. In short, the installation failed because I was running another installation.

~o~

So, what happens after a successful installation? I really don't know. But I do know one thing - and this is something I learned from kkosmo at #kubuntu

kkosmo: when you install in apt the install file is saved. It is saved in /var/cache/apt/archives/

So, if I understood him correctly, executing apt-get install would make a copy of the installation file in that directory. Hmmm...Now that would be interesting since that would enable me to burn any file in that directory on a DVD and then install it without connecting to the internet. This I got to verify first.