Linux and installation of commandline tools

[JoeBG]

I´m really new to Linux, so please do not kill me for my questions :)

Do I have to install commandline in Linux or can I use them like in windows - just download, put them in a folder and write a commandline?

Can I use something similar to a *.bat? Just double click and it begins? :)

[nm]

I´m really new to Linux, so please do not kill me for my questions :)

Do I have to install commandline in Linux or can I use them like in windows - just download, put them in a folder and write a commandline?
Generally one would treat command-line and GUI-based programs in the same way. If your distribution has an up-to-date version of the tool packaged, use the package manager to install it. Otherwise you can google for a packaged version for your specific distribution or compile the program from source code. Statically built binary programs are rarely available, so if the program has not been packaged for your distribution, you'll usually need to compile it yourself.

Which program are you trying to install?

Can I use something similar to a *.bat? Just double click and it begins? :)Yes, those are called scripts and can be written in various powerful languages. For basic tasks, shell scripts are sufficient. See:
http://www.freeos.com/guides/lsst/
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html

[Shinigami-Sama]

99% of the tools you need should be installed by default or VIA the package manager

some exceptions might be, up to date apache, samba, lighthttpd, but those are usually updated very quickly to be included

but then theres niche things like LTSP

[nm]

99% of the tools you need should be installed by default or VIA the package manager
Agreed.

some exceptions might be, up to date apache, samba, lighthttpd, but those are usually updated very quickly to be included

but then theres niche things like LTSP
And then there are projects like MPlayer and ffmpeg that rarely release "stable" versions with an actual version number and therefore binary distributions usually package ancient versions. For example, MPlayer 1.0rc2 was released a short while ago, but it just missed H.264 PAFF support that was introduced to ffmpeg SVN at the same time. This will probably mean that there won't be PAFF support in Ubuntu's MPlayer packages until 8.10. Xine is usually more up-to-date due to their snappier release cycle.