I sort of get how to install stuff.

./configure
make
make install

Then try to figure out how to start program.

But how do I uninstall stuff? Someone told me to just delete everything that has a reference to the program, but that's pretty messy and time consuming, I'm sure there's a cleaner way to do it.

I was also told I can type make uninstall in the directory I installed from, but I tried it and it does not work. also, what if the program was already installed?

I'm using Red Hat 8.0 so I partially uninstalled the default apache 2.0 because the mod_rewrite module does not work, so I want to put apache 1.3 but after hours of trying to figure out what I'm doing, no luck. can someone walk me through this process? I want to first get rid of all the failed attempts, and also get rid of apache 2.0 since I'm sure there's still traces of it somewhere.

Once this is done, I need to configure php and mysql.... that will be another nightmare I'm sure... I wish linux was as easy as windows, next next next, done, installed.

if you installed by source: go to the directory that you did make install and try make clean instead or make uninstall.

That only works sometimes though. If you installed by rpm try rpm -e <package name> (as root of course). Hope this helps

make uninstall

but vew people write uninstall scripts into there makefiles.

why not install from RPM, then you can rpm -e package-to-un-install

and if an rpm is not available, then install checkinstall and install source vis the

./configure
make
checkinstall

method, that allows you to use rpm -e to uninstall somthing installed from source.

Thanks for this GREAT tip, already tried it and works GREAT!