make never works

I've tried installing numerous applications inside Ubuntu (7.10)... every time i navigate to the directory where the makefile is and i do "make" or "make install" i just get a billion errors of all sorts.. it happened with all the applications i've used so far! im so annoyed! (but ubuntu is still totally awesome)

 

Have you looked in Synaptic Package Manager to see if the packages are available in .deb?

 

If you get errors when you "make" things it means you're missing dependencies. Ie. you don't have the required files installed on your computer to make the installation work. For example, to make program A you need dependencies B, C, D. Unless you have B, C and D installed you'll get errors since your installation won't know how to put everything together to make the installation work. When you get the errors though, take note, they should tell you what packages you need in order for the make to work correctly.

 

I remember running into similar issues. Have you installed the build-essential package? It contains many important compilers and libraries that are needed by the system. Try the following:

sudo apt-get build-essential

Then try "make" again.

 

It would be sudo apt-get install build-essential

 

Whoops, thanks for the correction. Unfortunately I'm no longer running Linux b/c my hardware isn't very cooperative.

 

Audio? Video? Wireless?

 

I can't get 3D acceleration or this piece-of-crap Broadcom card to work. I miss the days of Atheros!

 

Have you looked at the Restricted drivers manager in Ubuntu or Mint?

 

Yeah, but none of the drivers worked.