Why doesn’t Linux have an exe file?
Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at
07:23
To install a new program I have to type MAKE this and MAKE that like 3 times and wait for the thing to compile and it doesn’t even place a shortcut on the desktop so I have to searching for it. Would it be too much to ask for an exe (or something along those lines) so that I wouldn’t have to waste my time installing the simplest of applications? Do Linux geeks purposely keep this crap command line only to feel smarter?
Tagged with: crap • Linux • linux geeks
Filed under: Linux Applications
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Linux certainly has executable files, but as previously indicated, they don’t have to have .exe extensions.
I believe what you meant is something more like "Installshield". There are several equivalents for Linux, including the "apt" suite of tools for Debian-style packages and "rpm" for Redhat-style packages. These can install executables, documentation, source, or whatever is needed.
Linux geeks like the command line because it can be very powerful and efficient for some uses, including scripting and automation, pipelining (processing data through a sequence of either general purpose utilities or specialized applications without explicit intermediate files), and low-bandwith access.
Because Windows and Linux are two different operating systems. Linux is based on UNIX, while Windows is based on its own infrastructure. Linux, however, is made to be programmatically flexible to use, for use in servers, or programming, and such. Although, you can run Windows applications using APT-GET(or so I can recall that’s the name of it).
If you don’t want to learn how to do things the easy way, do it the hard way. Your distro probably has a GUI package manager, but you don’t want to use that, it would be to easy and you couldn’t be the macho psudo-geek you aspire to be.
Some people belong in the windoze world.
.exe is simply Microsoft’s method for identifying file types. UNIX/Linux systems use a more reliable method of checking the "magic number" of a file (first couple of bits of a file). For example, a .exe can be renamed and it becomes unexecutable but a binary on a UNIX/Linux system doesn’t care what the name is.
As for make files, it sounds like you are downloading and compiling from source. More mature open source applications tend to give options for both source and binary downloads. If you download a binary package, you’ll still need to go through an installation process (may be as simple as setting a PATH variable or possibly integrating into the desktop manager as an option in the menu).
"Do Linux geeks purposefully keep this crap command line to feel smarter?" – Hard to say. I’m sure some may look at it that way but I imagine most just find it easier to execute applications from a command line. A graphical environment isn’t always the most efficient method of doing things but it does tend to simplify things (my parents can generally learn to do things in a graphical environment but would be totally lost at a command line). As a long time UNIX and MS Windows user myself, I tend to prefer command line as it is faster. I also like the ability to "dig into" applications on UNIX/Linux systems where things on MS Windows tends to be a bit more closed.
There is not .exe for executable file. An executable file has is executable flag set on it.
Make install could help for installing things.