Many softwares are not in rpm package form, but in the form of tar ball.For softwares which will be used by the whole system, what is(are) the right places to put them?

It also appears confusing to me when I looked at the locations of some softwares in RedHat(v.61)which were probably installed by rpm. For example, some softwares I expected to find in /usr/bin/local but they are not there but scattered in various unexpected locations.

So, my question again, Where do we installed tar ball softwares since in many cases, the installation doc does not say anything expecially in the case of Linux?

Red Hat is funny like that (although they now do conform to the FHS - http://www.pathname.com/fhs/). As far as the where to install question goes, if you are not sure just use the default. When you type make install it will install it to where the authors think it should go. To change this you must edit the Makefile. If it is just a binary (no Makefile) and you are not sure I suggest you visit the above link.

Hello!
 

Could you illustrate more on the rpm mode of files.