I understand that the terminal is intimidating at first, especially if you
don't understand what the commands are doing. Magic Banana already covered
some of this, but here's an explanation of what each command does. I'm also
adding in a few extra lines to help you understand what's happening.
Hopefully that will make you feel more comfortable running them.
sudo apt-get install build-essential xorg-dev xutils-dev automake libtool
This installs the packages build-essential, xorg-dev, xutils-dev, automake,
and libtool. The graphical equivalent would be to search for each package
individually in Synaptic and installing them. Since installing software
requires more privileges than a regular user, we need to begin the command
with 'sudo', which means "superuser do" (do this as superuser). The use of
'sudo' is why you need to type your password.
cd ~/ #or whatever directory you want to use for this build
"cd" means "change directory." It is the graphical equivalent of double
clicking on a directory in your file manager.
echo ~/
"echo" prints back your command to the terminal. In this case, it will print
not '~/' but '/home/[user]', revealing that '~' is just a shorter way to
refer to your home directory. Therefore 'cd ~/' takes you to your home
directory. Your home directory is where you begin when you open a new
terminal, so you only need this line if you want to build somewhere else.
echo #comment
There output is blank, because a '#' and everything following it is a comment
and gets ignored, so you actually don't have to delete aloniv's comment when
you paste that line into the terminal.
ls
'ls' lists the contents of the current directory. If you are in your home
folder you should see Documents, Downloads, Music, etc.
wget
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/driver/xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2
"wget" followed by a URL downloads whatever is at that that URL. It is quite
useful for large downloads or an unstable internet connection, because if
your download is interrupted you can use 'wget -c [URL]' to continue the
download where it left off. (The 'c' option means "continue.")
ls
This will print the contents of the current directory again. You'll see that
the file we downloaded, xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2, is now listed.
tar -xjf xf86-video-sis-0.10.9.tar.bz2
A .tar.bz file is a compressed archive. The 'tar' command extracts it. the
'x' option means extract. The 'j' option means that the compression format is
bzip2 (which we know from the .bz2 extension). The 'f' means that the next
part of the command is the file we want to extract.
ls
This will list the contents of the current directory again. You'll see that
the previous command create a directory called 'xf86-video-sis-0.10.9'
cd xf86-video-sis-0.10.9/
Change to the new directory.
autoconf
automake
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
These commands prepare to compile the program.
ls
Notice that the contents of this directory include a file called 'Makefile'
make
'make' compiles the program. 'make' gets its instructions for how to compile
the program from the Makefile.
sudo make install
'make install' installs the program. 'make' also gets its instructions for
how to install the program (which files go where?) from the Makefile. Since
we are installing the program system-wide, we need to use 'sudo' again.
