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it sucks: a binary on one system (Ubuntu, say) will certainly NOT work on another (Fedora, say). And each community will provide a different way to distribute the software they maintain, which makes this whole "installing software" a mess! However, fear not, I will try to help you out.

Since you read this thing, I will assume now that you are not an expert on computer. Therefore, you must be using either using systems with rpm or deb software (I will explain them real quick below). Therefore, I will main explain those two. Then, I will touch on how to compile a program from source. About rpm and deb: since each program, including Windows', consists of several files, they need to be put together. In Windows tradition, the programmer would create a setup.exe (or install.exe or something similar), sometimes with some compressed files. On Linux, such approach is not generally accepted. First, letting a program run on your system is dangerous. Virus, spyware, ad-ware, you name it. All are from letting programs run on your system without proper installation. But then, on Windows, you cannot install something without running its installation program! A paradox. One more problem with Linux: a program on Linux usually have vast dependency. This means that a program usually need a large amount of library to run. On Windows, since it is about money, producers usually create bundles, each of which is complete and need little or no other library other than Windows itself. This is just inefficient: people reinvent the wheel all the time. But who cares, you will pay for it! On Linux, no one pays, so the programmers rarely do that. They don't have time, so they use some existing library. This make each program not a real software as we usually perceive in Windows, but a node in a chain of software. To solve those two issues, the programmers decided something like this: they will create a compressed file which will NOT run. That file has all binary files of the program, the identification of the program, and information on what other libraries and programs it needs. This greatly simplify the installation of Linux software! Two popular kinds of those compressed file are rpm and deb. RPM is from Red Hat Linux, now used by its descendants (Mandriva, Yellow Dog, Fedora, etc.). Deb is from Debian Linux, famously used by Ubuntu and its cousins.

Now, if you use any of those two systems, RPM (Red Hat, Fedora, Mandriva) or DEB (Debian, Ubuntu and its branch-offs), you won't even need

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