| Beginner's Guide |
Software management - how to get applications
One challenge new users have when migrating from other operating systems (such as Windows and macOS) to Linux is the way new applications are located and downloaded.
People who have used Windows (or macOS) in the past are accustomed to doing a web search for the name of the application they want, visiting the website of the organization which makes the software, finding the download page, downloading the installer/bundle, and then clicking it to install the new application.
The above approach has a few problems with it. We need to know the name of the application we want, we need to pick the right website from the search results, we often need to know which version of the operating system we are running in order to get the right download. It's a time consuming process and, if we pick the wrong option, the software will not work or we may end up downloading a malware application which is just pretending to be the software we want.
Linux distributions take a different approach which should feel familiar to people who have used Android or iPhone smartphones. On Linux the distribution provides a software centre (some people call it an app store). The specific name of the software centre can vary from one Linux distribution to another, but the software centre is usually labelled "Software", "Add/Remove Software", or "Discover".
The software centre on Linux Mint
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We can open the software centre on our desktop and then search for applications using either a specific name or description, such as "office" or "media player". The software centre will show us matching applications and we can then click an Install button to download and install the item.
This approach helps in several ways. It means we do not need to search the web, possibly running into scam websites. It means we don't need to find a download page or pick the right version for our computer. The software centre handles all of that for us.
Updates
Software centres on Linux also handle updates for us. This gives us one central location for fetching updates for all applications on the system. This is more efficient than the Windows approach where each application regularly checks for its own updates, consuming more bandwidth, and then offers to install updates individually.
Repositories
The Linux approach works by using pools of applications which have been curated for us and collected by the distribution's developers. The developers make sure applications are safe, do not include malware, and should work with type of computer. These collections of applications are called software repositories (or just "repositories") in the Linux community.
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