You cannot download and run the files from the site like in Windows on Linux, but you have to install software on Linux using software repositories and package manager. These package managers are developed in a way to do all the work for you. These package managers make the process of installation easier as compared to windows.

Software Repositories:

The users of Linux usually don’t download and install applications from the websites. The software repositories of Linux distribution are hosted by themselves. The repositories for each Linux version have their software packages that are specifically compiled for them.

Package Managers:

The package managers are like a mobile app store, but they exist long ago before the existence of app store. You have to tell the package manager about the software installation, and it will download the required package, install the package, and set it up, and you don’t have to click again and again to complete the process as we have to do in windows. When there is an update regarding your software, then the package manager will do it for you.

How to Install Software on Linux:

You have to open the package manager on your device and search for the software to install software on Linux the manager will do all the work for you and complete the process of installation.  Linux distributions offer a variety of frontends to the package manager.

How to Delay Updates:

When a new version of any software is released on Linux, the manager downloads it for the user, but sometimes the users don’t want to update them automatically. For example, when a new version of any software is released, Mac and Windows users will get it from the related web. On Linux, the Linux distribution must package the latest release of software and take it out in the form of an update. If you open the preferences of Firefox on Linux, you will notice that Firefox itself has no ability to update automatically.

The users itself can also download and install the applications but for this they will need the compilation and installation process of software from its source, and this will remove all the benefits of a package manager like centralized and automatic security updates. The latest releases of Firefox are a priority because they have the updates for the safety.

To handle this issue, some of the Linux distributions offer the users rolling release cycles that will push the new versions of software into their repositories.

To bring latest versions of significant packages to the older distributions, Ubuntu offers the users the backports repository, but all the most recent versions of software don’t go to these backports repositories.

More Repositories:

As the Linux distributions ship is pre-configured with their repositories, the users are allowed to add more repositories to the system. The repository that you are going to add should be developed for the system, package manager, and Linux distribution.