tarball

i hate this thing.
anyway here are some truly-bloody-hard-to-remember kinda how-to.
when i happen to do one, thousands (exaggerated for sure, but i dont know how to express like 'berpuluh-puluhan' or something to that effect) of google results i clicked to just to execute few tiny lines. why dont i compile it here for my reference, aite?

• download a tarball. its a compressed folder, or zipped as the one in win. the extension can be .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2 and few others. (obviously from the websites n not repo/sypnaptic)
  
• change the directory to the folder that contains the downloaded tarball

cd /home/anggun/Download and ls to list all the files inside. should see the newly installed package by now.

• unpack the tarball

tar xzvf filename.tar.gz

tar xjvf filename.tar.bz2

• change the directory of newly unpack folder.

'cd /filename' then 'ls' to see what's inside.

• look for install.txt or readme.txt and take sometimes to read. in case there might be some useful info there.
• ./configure it just checks your system and assigns values for system-dependent variables.
  
• make to actually built the executable binary program.
  
• sudo make install to finally install it.
  
• done, if it returns no error somewhere. and congratulations.
  

credits:
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/softinstall.html
http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/156/installing-from-tarballs/
http://www.berkshirelug.org/mediawiki/index.php/InstallTarball

p/s: i never succeed doing one. always try harder for a simpler alternative. too bad you tarballs, as bad as ur name sounds.