make vs. imake?

[Robert N. Eaton]

Hi all,

I recently tried to install a tarball of Firefox into my new Kubuntu. 
After I untarred and gunzipped, I tried make, make install and make clean.

I got the computer equivalent of, "Make! We don' need no steenking 
make!" I tried man make, and got " No manual entry for make."

Then I tried locate make, and among other things turned up many 
references to imake.  I invoked man imake, but this left some question 
as to whether imake is a direct replacement for make.

Then I googled imake and read several entries, including the imake FAQ, 
and what I think I learned was this:

After invoking tar xvvzf to xxx.tar.gz, invoke imake -l (or -D?), xmkmf 
(to create a make file from the imake file, then make install, and make 
clean.

Is this the process? Or am I still in the dark?

Bob Eaton