n00b help with ./configure, make, make install....

[Jammin1984]

Hi.

I have just installed slack on my laptop as:

1)Its fast
2)Its not a meta-distro and is gonna force me to learn

I have ran knoppix and gentoo before, using apt and emerge is really too hard at all for day to day use.

So....

I have downloaded a package in slack and am trying to install using ./configure, make then make install.

So i un-compress the package. I then try to run ./configure and get the message
"./ <Whatever> No Such file or directory.

When i have unzipped the package in my home directory im left with a usr dir and in that usr dir a bin, doc, lib and share. I wish to install this way having such dir's for each (future) user in their home dir, allowing, within reason them, and i to install what we want.

Im really a wee bit puzzled and am not one bit ashamed to admit that im too used to windows and package mangement. I know their are some unofficial package managers for slack but would love to know how to handle stuff 'manually'. I have tried a "man configure" but no avail.

What am i doing wrong? (Im guessing these will out-weigh the things im doing right.... )

Thanks much

[__J]

the configure script comes in the source tarball itself(its not on your system). if you extract a package and it has directories (like usr, doc, lib. etc..) it is a binary package not a source package.

[UgoDeschamps]

Have a look at This Tutorial... it'll help you in your learning... as well as giving you lots of information

[adrenaline]

In slackware look for packages with the .tgz extenstion then as root you type
installpkg <filename.tgz>
then it installs for you. It acts kind of like a rpm -but it is slack exclusive so usually it is failsafe. I have not had 1 issue yet and I have used it a lot.

[Jammin1984]

Thanks all, will do some reading of the suggested articles, yous have helped no end.

I have ran knoppix and gentoo before, using apt and emerge is really too hard at all for day to day use.

Was supposed to be:

**using apt and emerge is really not too hard

and im guessing yous picked up on that so thanks much.

Thanks,

Jammin