Try to chill a little; Linux isn't the most forgiving environment and people will keep having problems and asking for help and misinterpreting our instructions. That's life.
Ok, I am sorry for my tone.
I admit fpcupdeluxe is an impressive tool and it has worked most of times I used it. Yet it is complex and its GUI is intimidating for me and more so for new users.
It tackles the most difficult cases of installation, especially cross-compilation with FPC. Installing native FPC from sources is already more difficult than installing Lazarus from sources. Installing a cross-compiler is
much more difficult and fpcupdeluxe shines there.
For a person who just wants to try latest Lazarus it is problematic. The GUI gives an impression that the task is very complex. It is difficult to see what is essential.
It gives the impression that installing FPC from sources is needed to install Lazarus. No it is not. Any distro provides at least FPC 3.0.2 which is OK for building Lazarus. It is a matter of running one "
svn checkout ..." command and then "
make", for heaven's sake!
What more, many people use fpcupdeluxe to get a combination of FPC trunk + Lazarus trunk. It is OK if you know what you are doing but their chance for broken compilation or other hickups increases. It is not for new casual Lazarus users!
Let's say fpcupdeluxe is like a sports car, uncomfortable in city traffic but shines when getting on a fast cornered track. Kudos for its authors, yes!
@dfergfla, I also started computing in 1980's. Fundamentals of programming have changes less than one would imagine. However there is one true innovation which you must learn, namely revision control systems. Subversion and Git are the most commonly used now.
The commands I gave you must be run on a console. After 2 years of Linux you know how to do that, right? It is a matter of copy/paste, even if you don't fully understand what the commands do. The command for subversion is "
svn", it can get parameters like "
checkout" or "
update" ("
co" or "
up" for short).
Please take your time to study the commands. Soon they will seem trivial.
... and I don't want to take a chance on doing something really wrong and making a mess of my system. Don't say it can't happen, we all know it can.
I say it can't happen.
You are running the "svn" command as a normal user, not as root. By definition it cannot mess your whole OS. In the worst case scenario you mess the newly downloaded Lazarus sources. No big deal.
Tweaking the OS package system with "sudo" however by definition messes your whole system. You should avoid it by any means if you worry about messing up.