Searching for software installed on our Linux systems

Unix Commands

  • which
    If you know the exact name of the command you want to run, the which command should tell you its location:
    which emacs

  • man
    You can read a manual page on some commands with the man command:
    man emacs

  • man -k
    If you don't know the exact name of the command, you can try man -k. This example displays the name line of all man entries for the word editor:
    man -k editor.

  • locate
    You can find the location of a file on your computer with the locate command:
    locate gl.h

Debian

Debian tries to put common application names in the menus of some windowing systems, such as kde or gnome. Look through the menus of your window manager for debian or programs.

You can list all the packages currently installed on a debian machine with:
dpkg -l

To see all the files contained in a package:
dpkg -L PACKAGE

/opt

We install software that is not part of the debian archive, or more recent versions than is in the archives, in /opt on each machine. ls /opt to see these packages. In general, the debian packages executables can be found in /usr/bin and the /opt packages executables can be found in /usr/local/bin

Requesting new software

debian packages

We are happy to install new software on our systems. Just email techstaff with your installation request.

The easiest and quickest to install is software prepackaged for the debian systems, ie files with a .deb extension.

One good way to find software is to search the debian software archives. Here is a full list of all the software packages in the debian archive.

non-debian software

If a .deb does not exist for the software you want to install, we can often install it, though it may take more time.