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jjmac - agreed, I'm not comparing like with like. Unfortunately so often there aren't rpms available.
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Marrea ... Howdy

, it was just the use of the term "by comparision ..." (grin). But ... unavailable binaries ... well, thats also true for any particular system really. Qt stuff sure does seem to be tight on its' dependency ranges it seems ... all solved once all the correct development packages are familiarised. I remember having to install around 600 - 700 Mbs' of stuff once just to compile a single gnome app once. Some html wizywig ide type of thing, can't remember its name. Took me a month to get that all together, and about 30mins to decide i didn't like it once i had it compiled

(nearly feel over then) hehe.
Also ..., If something is very very new... i would usually expect some lag on package availability.... And, at least with the source compile you have the opportunity to apply some optimisation for your own system, which may be quite good, depending on the app.
On it installing in your "home" directory though ... that should be considered more of a feature than anything else. Basically the author/maintainer is trying to protect your system from clutter and the like by not installing in the standard system wide locations .. aka .. /usr. (Not an unusual practice). Unless specifically requested to do. Usually invoves passing a "--prefix=/usr" or "--prefix=/usr/local" switch to "./configure". As mentioned above, i would prefer "/usr/local" for an unpackaged compile. It just makes things easier to cleanup/uninstall later, if it mucks up or anything.
If the source has a "configure" stage, which would be surprising if it dosen't, though i haven't had a lot to do with Qt based compiles (by that i mean some packages will use a script that automates that stage) ... running "./configure --help", just to dump the options isn't a bad initial idea.
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IE4? What's that? Oh, yes that browser thing ...
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(grin)
Yeees, that thing, hehehe
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... incidentally, which currently has IE6 (via IE5).
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I still remember when i naively thought i could just uninstall IE5 and go back to IE4 (grin)..... But, I really don't know (grin), i'm sure it's lurking out there somewhere.
jm