Re: Compiling for dummies

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico redhat com>]

>  As an ex-Windows user (well, that's not quite true, I'm still forced to
>  use it at work until I can get my own machine) and *especially* as a non
>  programmer, I'm new to a lot of this Gnome and Linux stuff.  My question
>  is this: is there an any advantage to my trying to compile apps myself
>  from these tarballs?  Why would someone (again, a non programmer) do
>  this unless they were going to customize certain attributes?

You should use precompiled packages if they are available for your
system.  They mean that someone has taken the trouble of making sure
they build and work properly.

>  (are there some apps that are only available as source tarballs,
>  thus forcing a newbie to take that dive?)

Yes.  You could build binary packages if you know how to do that, or
kindly ask the binary package maintainers to build a package out of
those applications.

  Federico