[lug] best places to put builds?

[Keith C. Herold]

Howdy!  I am a relative idiot in Linux (and the real world too, I suppose)
so I confuse easy (myself, I mean).

Occasionally I try to download new software for my linux boxes (all redhat
7.0 + 10 million updates), but there is either no rpm or for some reason the
rpm doesn't work.  When I download the source, I usually stick it in /root
and do the configure-make-crossfingers bit.  My question is, is there some
standard place to do this?

The latest problem is installing python 2.0.  The rpm's require
libncurses.so.4 and libreadline.so.3, but I can't find them, so I figured I
would use the sources.  After downloading,configureing and running make, I
am left with a python directory in the /root, and have been copying the
resulting executable to /usr/bin.  But, when I run the interpreter, it can't
find some of the modules (still runs, though).  Since it seems like a bad
idea to point things to the root directory, is there a good place to put
these sources for the build?

--Keith