I checked back onto places like rpmfind.net and a few others that I had found during some earlier searches and didnt know exactly what they were for. I found exactly what I wanted and it worked perfectly. To be honest, I'll probably never need to build anything from source due to the popularity of rpm repositories and just the sheer number of rpm available for everything. Thanks for all your help.

There is no way that I know of to install source packages via GUI. But the command line method usually goes smoothly if you have all the dependencies.

If it says it's missing a dependency, try "sudo yum install dependency-name" and try compiling the package again.

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Yes. If there is a way to do it using the GUI in coordination with a package manager type application that would be perfect. Otherwise, I could try another command line howto but I haven't had any success with any of them so far, but if you know of one geared toward someone with no previous knowledge I'd be willing to give it a try. Thanks.

zoomzilla,

Yum in fedora, or Synaptic in Ubuntu and Mint, etc., they all have front end GUI easy to use click-this-click-that operation. the thing you seem to be looking for. To widen lists of software to choose from you only need maximize repositories.

What if the software you are looking for is not found in the repositories you depend on? Or say, your distro uses .rpm but the software you needed is available only in .deb packaging?

Then you only need to convert it into your preferred package format. You can install a GUI Alien Package Converter here. Once installed you can convert between package formats.

What if the software you needed is not available in many convertible packages?

Then you look for its source; find out if a source is available for Linux compilation. Once you have the source you can compile and install it using commands given by 'jhwilliams' above: i.e. --$ ./configure; make; sudo make install. Here you use the terminal but the commands are easy.

Tell us how you progress.

Hope this helps. Good luck.