Joel,
Please take a look at this. If you have any questions and/or need more help, just let me know.
It should be very rare that you would be required to install a program from source,
depending upon the GNU/Linux distribution you are using.
# 1.Be careful where you get files from, try to use official sources.
Download file and verify checksum information, to verify
that the file has not been tampered with, and that the download
completed... I don't bother with MD5 algorithm, if SHA256 and/or higher
is available.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO-11.htmlhttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToSHA256SUM#2. Verify that you're able to change permissions, if necessary. Set
permissions on file so that you can uncompress it. You may
need to use sudo or become root to install software.
http://www.linux.org/threads/command-chmod.161/you can do a search like the following for examples...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tar+files+linuxhttp://askubuntu.com/questions/25961/how-do-i-install-a-tar-gz-or-tar-bz2-fileit really helps to read the germane man pages...
on your system, do
$ man ls
and
$ man tar
and
$ man chown
and
$ man sudo
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/installing-a-program-from-a-tar-bz2-785508/
kind regards,
Daniel Villarreal
http://www.youcanlinux.org/