This is the old ROX web-site. Please use the new website instead.
"The Zero Install system makes software installation not merely easy but unnecessary. Users run their applications directly from the Internet from the software author's pages. Caching makes this as fast as running a normal application after the first time and allows off-line use."
Zero Install is a network filesystem from which you run applications. It makes aggressive use of a cache, meaning that once software is downloaded, it runs from the cache just as quickly as if you had installed it normally. Since everything is fetched on demand, you'll never be told that you're missing some library; it will be fetched automatically. Since the system is only a cache, you don't need root privileges to run software, making it more secure too.
Note: Zero Install is not part of ROX. It's a separate project which ROX is using as one of many ways to distribute our software.
See 
the Zero Install web site for full details.
This page describes the old filesystem-based version of Zero Install. This is being replaced by Add App, which doesn't require a kernel module, or even root access to install. Please try that first.
First, you need to install Zero Install itself. The process is described at http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/install.html.
Once that's working, you can go into the directory /uri/0install/rox.sourceforge.net/apps to find all the ROX applications ready to run!
If you don't have any of the ROX stuff at all, start like this:
$ cd /uri/0install/rox.sourceforge.net $ ./rox apps
This window should appear...
You can now try out any of the applications by clicking on them. Run ROX-Session if you want to make ROX your default desktop.
You can find more ROX applications in the directory /uri/0install/www.kerofin.demon.co.uk/apps.
You might like to read the Getting Started Guide next.
Open a filer window on the site with the application you want to upgrade (eg /uri/0install/rox.sourceforge.net) and click on the Refresh toolbar button. This makes the system aware of the new version. Clicking on an application will now run the latest version.
The old version is still available if you want it; bring up the menu over an application in the filer and choose Look Inside to see the directory containing all the available versions.
As having to compile and install a kernel module is difficult for many people, we have also developed a simpler system (written in pure Python). See the injector instructions page for an example of how this works.
Yes! Run each program you want while on-line and it will be cached. When you're off-line, the cached copy is used automatically.
You should also open one of the help files while on-line to make sure that the help is cached too.
No. Because Zero Install only downloads the parts of the software that you actually use, you'll typically download much less this way. For example, if you don't read the manual for version 2.1.2 of the filer, or use the french translation, then they will never be fetched. If you download traditional tarballs, debian packages or RPMs, then you end up downloading a lot more stuff you'll never use.
For reference, running ROX-Filer for the first time though Zero Install took 1m48s when the internet connection was an irDA link to a mobile phone connected via GPRS (download speed approx 2.5 Kbytes/sec). If you use a normal modem it will be faster than this, and broadband will be faster again, of course.
