Ok, I understand the basic concept of a shared object, my problem is about 50% of the programs I install via the .tar sources I cannot use because I get "error while loading shared libaries" errors. Is there any specific reason why I could be getting these errors in the with such frequency? I've tried removing the program and starting again (make clean | make uninstall), using different versions of the various programs etc...

If specifics are needed...I am currently having issues installing freeRadius on a Slackware 11.0 distribution under the 2.4.33 kernel with fluxbox running on top.

Thanks in advance for help...

Slackware has no automatic dependency checking, so you are expected to figure out what other software packages are required when installing a new application yourself. Those errors are how you determine what additional software you need to locate/install.

In general, when installing from source the program's ./configure script should check to make sure that you have all of the dependencies on your machine. Perhaps the libraries are there but not in the library search path? If installing from Slackware .tgz packages (NOT the same as installing from source), however, then MS3GFX's advice does apply to you.

Yeah, I'd thought the *.so errors were relational to a missing dependency or the like, but locating a supplemental library package to download to rectify the issue proves to be a lengthy internet dig. Usually, my searches for these libraries is rather fruitless...thanks for the help anyway guys.

It is a love it or hate it sort of thing. Maybe people (including myself) want manual control over everything that is installed on their system. Other people just want the OS to handle that by itself, and just give them the application they want to use.

That is why systems like apt-get have been developed, so you don't have to deal with dependencies if you don't want to.