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I have downloaded some programs from PortableLinuxApps.com such as Xnoise, and Chromium, and have them saved on a USB with the intention of their being part of a Swiss-Army-USB holiday gift for my brother. However, they were binary files when I downloaded them and the site says that I need to make the programs executable before I can run them. How might I do this?

More importantly, can I do this in the next 24 hours? If not, is there a way around this restriction?

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What happens when you try to run them now? – soandos Dec 23 '11 at 1:57
it displays an error message saying could not display "/media/JAKE/Xnoise0.1.10" JAKE is the name of the USB drive i am using and Xnoise0.1.10 is the binary file – That Guy Dec 23 '11 at 2:02
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If your USB key is still FAT, you can't easily. What you can do is tell the loader to execute the binary file.

# /lib/ld-linux.so.2 /media/JAKE/Xnoise0.1.10
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just ran the command. nothing happened – That Guy Dec 23 '11 at 2:19
wait. i need this to work for my brother who has no technical knowledge whatsoever, and wouldn't know a terminal from a text editor. is there a way to make it runnable? – That Guy Dec 23 '11 at 2:22
You would need to remount it with different permissions, which would require a terminal. Put the executable binary in a tarball instead. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Dec 23 '11 at 2:30
how would i do that? (im kinda new at this if you cant tell... i prefer osX to linux) – That Guy Dec 23 '11 at 2:33
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