program installation

I've had redhat linux 9 installed for a little over 4 months now, and i have been playing with it on and off. But im having programs running the programs i install, such as xscreensaver/xplanet/3ddesktop/Nvidia drivers all of which reqiured ./configuring and compiling i've followed the readme's and online instructions to the letter but it always ends up not working (ex. errors when i attempt to run the program due to incorrect paths, or i am just plain stupid cuase i cant even run the program).
whenever im installing something im always using the root account, and compiling from /root/programnamehere path. am i doin somethin wrong?
any help is greatly appreciated

ok so i downloaded debian and burned all 7 iso's on a CD, and proceeded to waste 7 hours of my life, thinking it would solve my problems, but it just led to me never being able to get the xwindow system working becuase all the generic drivers never worked. so screw it

This may be off but did you check the MD5sum for all the disks. Maybe one of them had bad info on it.

Aye Aye, Listen to this man, he knows what he is talking about... LOL

I had 4 flopped *nix installs due to corrupted ISO's before I learned about integrity checking with MD5's.

Here's a link that may help if you need it.
http://linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/verifyiso.html

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ok so i downloaded debian and burned all 7 iso's on a CD

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I haven't tried debian yet, but you burned 7 iso's onto 1 cd? The other thing is, if you want some good help, then you will have to post some good info. If you would have posted your error messages from your RH 9 install, them maybe somebody could have helped you.
I always download apps. into my /home/downloads file, and only switch to root when I "make install" ex. ->

Ok, lets say I want to install an app. called klicker-1.0.tar, open up a terminal window(shell)
[devpon@localhost devpon]$
[devpon@localhost devpon]$ cd downloads (switch to the directory where klicker was downloaded to)
[devpon@localhost downloads]$ tar -xvf klicker-1.0.tar (decompresses and extracts file)
[devpon@localhost downloads]$ cd klicker-1.0 (switch to directory that tar created)
[devpon@localhost klicker-1.0]$ ./configure
[devpon@localhost klicker-1.0]$ make
[devpon@localhost klicker-1.0]$ su - (switch to root user)
Password: (root password)
[root@localhost root]# make install

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Originally posted here by Alphaflux
im having programs running the programs i install, such as xscreensaver/xplanet/3ddesktop/Nvidia drivers all of which reqiured ./configuring and compiling i've followed the readme's and online instructions to the letter but it always ends up not working

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Uhhh, you compile drivers from Nvidia? It's a .sh and needs no compile. If you followed all of them to the letter, then you would know that of course ;)

sh *.sh while logged in as root will install the driver for you. The rest.....I recommend reading a book about Linux.