Basic Knowledge I: Install programs from source

I decided to include some basic knowledge into my blog - not everything (I never could do that, and there's already a lot of information about this stuff on the net) -- but some things I had problems with at the beginning because it wasn't easy to find explanations on the net.
One thing like that was: What means "install a program from source" and: "how do I do that"?

To install a program from source means you have to install the application from a file which has the ending .tar /.tar.gz / tar.bz / .tar.bz2 and not .deb !
.deb files are really easy to install: you just download the file, click, and then "install".

Install from source is a little bit more complicated, but not very hard though.

You just have to follow these steps:

Download the file into a directory (p.ex.: /home/zerlinna/). Then you need to unpack the file (all the endings named above are endings for compressed files - that's why we need first to decompress them). You can do this by rightclicking on the file: "Extract here". Now there'll be a folder (usually named after the program).

Open your konsole and go into the directory of this folder, p.ex:

cd /home/zerlinna/program

Then you need to configure it first:

./configure

If you get no errors, congratulations! You can move on to the next step. If you got errors, check them carefully. They tell you if you need to install other programs / libraries etc. first.
After configure, type

make

and after that

sudo make install

This command requires your password.
All of these three commands can take a lot of time (depending on the application you want to install) - don't worry if you have a lot of incomprehensible letters flooding on your konsole :-)

Now you can install programs from source.
If you think: "There must be an easier way to do that!" you are completely right: there is, just have a look at the post above: "Nice Programs IX: Kompile".