I know it’s not that hard $ dpkg -i but opening the terminal gives normies an aneurysm and thanks to the crazy gatekeeping gen alpha doesn’t know what a file type is now.
I use Ubuntu btw. Personally, the App store’s on Linux confused me a ton, setting up Flatpak and some other package repositories. I much preferred the windows way, shocker, with just downloading and double-click the exe file.
Do I have to make a pull request myself to get this done, or what is the debate on this?
FWIW instead of
dpkg -i stuff.deb
, you can use apt as such:apt install ./stuff.deb
(The path syntax like./
is required to use a local file instead of searching for a package name).Unlike dpkg, apt is able to fetch dependencies if needed.
Just use nautilus-action
Strange when I double click a .deb and or a .flatpakref file the gnome software application opens with the option to install that package. (Linux mint)
Gnome-Software and GDebi can do exactly that for you. Download a deb, right click “open with X”, and they’ll install it for you using GUI. You can even change file associations so debs are opened by gdebi/gnome-software by simple double-clicking.
If you have Nautilus as the filemanager, you can write a Nautilus script that does this for you, you just then have to right click and select the script. You can run essentially any script this way, I use it for some preset file conversions.
This is deliberately not allowed in order to ensure that Linux remains exclusive for nerds.
I much preferred the windows way, shocker, with just downloading and double-click the exe file.
This is appimage!
Om, AppImage is portable exe. Has it’s uses.
Not quite what you want, but in dolphin you can open a terminal with F4, and then just type
sudo deb -i <package.deb>
and your password. Pretty quick.It’s a useful shortcut.
Typing all that is still way much more work than just 2 clicks. Besides, OP specifically asked for an alternative without opening the terminal
That’s a bad idea because you have no clue if any random .deb file is actually compatible with your system or not (a .deb intended for use on Debian Bookworm will not necessarily work on Ubuntu 25.04, or vice-versa, for example). And that’s on top of the security issues and lack of dependency resolution that others have mentioned already. If you’re new enough to Linux that you don’t feel comfortable with the terminal, you should not be trying to install things via .deb file to begin with.
Doesn’t
apt
(notapt-get
), unlikedpkg
, perform a dependency resolution before installing a downloaded deb package?