What are "libc", "glibc"?

Do I need to watch out the libc/glibc version on my linux box so that my download would install and run properly?

How do I check the libc/glibc version on my system?

not really sure what libc is but glibc is extremely important. Its pretty much the most basic library on a linux system becareful withy it because if it becomes corrupt or deleted you will have serious problems with your machine. I usually just use locate to see what version

Every unix system has a libc, or C library. It interfaces programs to the kernel, and providers other services like DNS lookup, i18n, dynamic linking etc

glibc is the one we use, the GNU C library.

glibc is unusual in that it never breaks backwards compatability (or hardly ever), so you don't normally need to worry about the version, you can forget about it. Only people who work on the packaging side of Linux like me need be concerned with that.

However, if you want to know the version, you can just run /lib/libc.so.6, to produce (for instance):

[mike@littlegreen mike]$ /lib/libc.so.6
GNU C Library development release version 2.2.93, by Roland McGrath et al.
Copyright (C) 1992-2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Compiled by GNU CC version 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7).
Compiled on a Linux 2.4.9-9 system on 2002-09-05.
Available extensions:
GNU libio by Per Bothner
crypt add-on version 2.1 by Michael Glad and others
The C stubs add-on version 2.1.2.
linuxthreads-0.10 by Xavier Leroy
BIND-8.2.3-T5B
NIS(YP)/NIS+ NSS modules 0.19 by Thorsten Kukuk
Glibc-2.0 compatibility add-on by Cristian Gafton
libthread_db work sponsored by Alpha Processor Inc
Report bugs using the `glibcbug' script to <bugs@gnu.org>.
[mike@littlegreen mike]$

This is somewhat unusual - 2.2.93 as a version doesn't actually exist iirc, it means it's a custom Red Hat job. You get the idea.

rpm -qa|grep "^glibc" => glibc-xxx
rpm -qi glibc-xxx

Thanks for the info on libc, guys. It's a thrilling experience delving into it