Let me try to explain things in simple words: when you just use your computer, you usually do so as a user with normal rights. It means you have the permission to do everything with the files in your own home directory and to run programs globally installed on the computer. However, if you want to install a new program globally, you need permissions for that. A normal user doesn't have those, but the root user (that's where he comes in) has all permissions. Therefore, you usually have to become root to install a new program. You can become root by executing the command "su" (or "sudo su" on Ubuntu variants) and entering the root password.

If you don't have the root password, you'll have to install the software into your home directory, which requires a few parameters to be set right, depending on the exact program you're installing. In general, I prefer installing system-wide as the files are placed where other programs that might depend on them expect them to be. I hope this helps, let me know if you need more assistance.

Rechosen

Basic Installation
==================

* so far a "./configure && make && make install" should do it for you
(of course you need to be root to do "make install" depending on
install prefix)

But,when i give the command:

hp@ubuntu:~/i8086emu-src-0.9.2$ ./configure && make && make install

I get the following errors:

mkdir -p -- /usr/local/info/i8086emu/examples
mkdir: cannot create directory `/usr/local/info': Permission denied
make[1]: *** [install] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/hp/i8086emu-src-0.9.2/src'
make: *** [install] Error 2

Can anyone explain me the meaning of the errors and how to solve it?
Also, i am not able to understand the meaning of "of course you need to be root to do "make install" .

Luckily, I haven't had much of a problem with this. I have had a few errors here and there, but was able to figure most of them out.

Hi there.
Great installation help...thanks, fixed my problem.
Anyone reading this guys stuff should bookmark it.

Hi there.
Thank you for a great post. It was very helpfull.
Anyone reading this post should bookmark this guys contents.

I have a new PC and needed some installation help so i went over to http://www.InstallSoftware.com but they did not provide me with the in depth
info this guy did. he kicks all the bigger sites' butts.

Thanks Again

After installing and setting up Linux RedHat for the root and 1 user account, I was unable to login. The id & pw were not recognised.

How can I access the system without re-installing the opr sys again? If all else fails, that is what I'll have to do. What other options do I have?

Thanks,
James

After years of stumbling about, attempting to install apps, this single page quickly explained what I needed to know, especially the first 2 errors.

Thank you very much Rechosen!

I didn't know "make" would take so long.
I would have "xkilled" the terminal, except I found another webpage which mentioned long MAKE times as average.

Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou!