I've read many forums online and none to me honestly actually explain very well how to compile from source code, i've tried getting the program to work either with tar.gz file or another tar file, I am using mandriva one 2009 and ubuntu 8.10 no luck available I understand that I have to uncompress the file, i've read about make file, /.configure but still no luck, can someone on here show me a very simple way for compiling from source code and make everything come together and work.

Without going in to dependency checking and the world of pain that that entails, provided you have the necessary libraries (GCC etc, not sure if they come with the distros you mentioned) installed on the system it is usually just a case of:*

tar zxf yourfile.tar.gz
cd yourfile
./configure
make
make install

What program are you trying to compile and what errors are you encountering?

*Compiling a new kernel is rather more complicated

EDIT: I think you need to be root or use sudo to run the make and make file if the file is uncompressed into a directory somewhere other than your home folder.

EDIT: I think you need to be root or use sudo to run the make and make file install if the file is uncompressed into a directory somewhere other than your home folder. program is to be available system-wide

FTFM; had a senior moment back there, sorry.

I've read many forums online and none to me honestly actually explain very well how to compile from source code, i've tried getting the program to work either with tar.gz file or another tar file, I am using mandriva one 2009 and ubuntu 8.10 no luck available I understand that I have to uncompress the file, i've read about make file, /.configure but still no luck, can someone on here show me a very simple way for compiling from source code and make everything come together and work.

You can follow slackula's instructions, or (he wouldn't know about this with him using Slackware and all ), use your package installer. Under ubuntu it's synaptics. Not sure what Madravia uses....

I've read many forums online and none to me honestly actually explain very well how to compile from source code, i've tried getting the program to work either with tar.gz file or another tar file, I am using mandriva one 2009 and ubuntu 8.10 no luck available I understand that I have to uncompress the file, i've read about make file, /.configure but still no luck, can someone on here show me a very simple way for compiling from source code and make everything come together and work.

You can follow slackula's instructions, or (he wouldn't know about this with him using Slackware and all ), use your package installer. Under ubuntu it's synaptics. Not sure what Madravia uses....

What?? We Slackers have this luxurious, highly featured package management tool

But I am not sure how a package installer would help him to compile from source..