I needed to upgrade some packages in Ubuntu to install a program from source. No prob, downloaded the newest versions, installed them and...one of the dependencies still linked to the old version, though the install for the updated version was a success. Sure I could change the prefix or what not, but if I could just uninstall the old version, all would be great, right? I prefer source installs because I suck with apt-get, plus, Im new and like the practice of the raw, DIY problem-solving.

Correct me if Im wrong...I have program-1.0, download source for program-2.0, install it, and now have program-1.0, AND program-2.0?

I read somewhere in this forum to do 'make uninstall' but thats only good IF its something I installed from source, but I was upgrading stuff that came with the Ubuntu install.

I hope this is enough to explain my problem. I can't tell you much more because some genius(ME) uninstalled a package from adept that totally removed everything, and I had to redo the whole damn system. However, I want to figure this out.

Thanks for the help!

Is this what you need?

ha, that makes pretty good sense. now that i see it, im not quite sure why i didnt get that...am i right about the old and new versions being installed next to each other? or does the new source install write over the old? Thanks again.

I can't honestly say I know the answer the that. That should be a no brainer for a lot of the people on this forum though. Sorry I couldn't help more.

You'll be saving yourself a LOT of trouble if you can learn how to use apt-get or (my preference) synaptic. Using these programs will remove obsolete versions of programs, so you don't get the confusion of having more than one version of a program installed. If you want to do a lot of compiling source from a tweaking perspective, I suggest that Ubuntu is not the ideal distro. Something like Slackware, Gentoo or LFS would probably suit you better.

In answer to your question, I would expect that a source-install will overwrite the old version, except in the case where the old version had different/extra files. This may often be the case for some libraries but is probably less common for end user programs. A lot of libraries tend to create symlinks to the last installed version, to avoid problems with other packages linking to outdated versions. However, a package manager should remove the old version, and then install the new version. Since every package knows which files belong to it, files don't get left-over.

Sure You can have packages in different versions
f.e. on my machine i have gcc in versions 4.0 and 4.1
Some packages just need to be kept for compability with older software
In case of user software like aMule or any other user program You dont have to have older version.

synaptic is just a graphical front end to apt-get. APT enlists dpkg to remove any conflicting packages and subsequently install the new packages from the DEB files it downloaded to the cache directory.