Can't move help folder

I’m trying to move the help folder from the manual folder I downloaded. I moved it out of the unzipped folder and am trying to move it into usr/share/audacity, but it won’t go.

A second look at the instructions says:

Note: Root permission will normally be required to modify the /usr directory. Try running a sudo unzip command from a terminal ( for example, sudo unzip ~/Desktop/audacity-manual-2.1.3.zip -d /usr/share/audacity/ ).

I don’t know what this means. Should I start all over?

That’s using the text-base commands instead of the graphic interface.

You can do that on a Mac, too. Mine would look like this.

Last login: Wed Aug 26 19:45:32 on console
lucille:~ koz$ ls -al
total 96
drwxr-xr-x+  22 koz   staff    704 Aug 26 19:45 .
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  admin    160 Aug 11  2018 ..
-r--------    1 koz   staff      7 Aug 11  2018 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@   1 koz   staff  30724 Aug 24 08:53 .DS_Store
drwx------    2 koz   staff     64 Aug 26 19:45 .Trash
drwx------@  66 koz   staff   2112 Aug  8 16:25 Library
drwx------+  10 koz   staff    320 Jul 25 10:00 Movies
drwx------+   7 koz   staff    224 Mar  6  2018 Music
drwx------+   5 koz   staff    160 Aug  1  2016 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x+   6 koz   staff    192 Mar 15 12:40 Public
lucille:~ koz$

Sometimes you need that if what you want to do requires more executive horsepower than you have, or that the machine wants to give you.

Koz

I don’t remember all the spells, but open up a text window or shell and execute commands as “Super User” rather than normal you.

That’s what sudo is. That’s short for Super User DO. Execute something as a Super User. You can quickly run some programs like that rather than closing the computer and logging in as an actual high-power Super User and then reversing it all later.

Koz

That’s what the instructions say: sudo. So I’ll just start over and use that command. Tomorrow!

sudo unzip ~/Desktop/audacity-manual-2.1.3.zip -d /usr/share/audacity/

“sudo” means “super-user do”, which means “computer, do this as if I was the super-user root”.

“unzip” is the command to extract the contents of a ZIP file. The syntax being:
unzip

Obviously “~/Desktop/audacity-manual-2.1.3.zip” needs to be the actual audacity manual ZIP file, and “/usr/share/audacity/” needs to be the actual location of Audacity in the system. If you built Audacity from source, the location is likely to be “/usr/local/share/audacity/”.

My installation failed. I don’t have a zip file. I have tar.xz. That did not work so I used the command ending with “zip.” it did something because the terminal switched to another window called “Own Editor” and there it sits blinking, but I don’t know what to enter into that window. I’ll just leave it open until I learn what it is. I tried to open the manual from Audacity and it still says that it’s not installed. What am I sposed to do in Own Editor?

That’s the wrong file.
The manual is available from here: Audacity download latest version
Click on the text link that says “Audacity Manual”. That will give you the file “audacity-manual-2.4.2.zip”