Run the command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Chances are you will need things like gcc to actually do the building so you might as well install those as well. The build-essential package will install other tools used along with make.

Answer from Bert on askubuntu.com
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org โ€บ installation guide โ€บ how-to-install-make-on-ubuntu
How to install make on Ubuntu - GeeksforGeeks
July 23, 2025 - The basic objective of the make command is to break down a large program into smaller chunks and determine if it needs to be recompiled. It also has all of the necessary instructions for recompiling them. In this article, we will be installing the make program on the Ubuntu system.
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makefile - How to install "make" in ubuntu? - Stack Overflow
Make is not a program you need to download. it's a utility that comes integrated into nearly every distribution of linux. ... Wait, what? "ubuntu centOS"? Those are two different flavors with their own (often radically different) ways of doing things. It's almost certainly either one or the other, unless there's some freakish mashup of the two i haven't seen or heard of yet. Either way, this is a question about installing ... More on stackoverflow.com
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software installation - How do you install Make from source? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
I have tried Make version 4.2 and 4.3 on Ubuntu 18.x, RHEL 8.x, and SUSE 15.x servers. But I get the same problem. I cannot use binary packages (e.g, yum, apt, or zypper commands). I try to run More on unix.stackexchange.com
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April 16, 2020
Where is the apt install make package file for 5.11.0-16 kept?
sudo apt install build-essential should get you everything you need for building executables. You should really see about tethering a mobile device or connecting to a lan. It's going to be a lot easier to get the software you need. More on reddit.com
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June 12, 2021
Why "sudo make install"?
I install to /usr/local so that itโ€™s separate from packages installed by Apt but accessible to all users More on reddit.com
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ioflood.com โ€บ blog โ€บ install-make-command-linux
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linuxfromscratch.org โ€บ museum โ€บ lfs-museum โ€บ 5.1-pre1 โ€บ LFS-BOOK-5.1-PRE1-HTML โ€บ chapter05 โ€บ make.html
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Official download location for Make (3.80): ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/ For its installation Make depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC, Gettext, Glibc, Grep, Sed.
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Make gets its knowledge of how to build your program from a file called the makefile, which lists each of the non-source files and how to compute it from other files. When you write a program, you should write a makefile for it, so that it is possible to use Make to build and install the program.
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Make is a general purpose workflow program, usually used for compilation. But it can be used for anything.

When you do something like "make all", the make program executes a rule named "all" from a file in current directory named "Makefile". This rule usually calls the compiler to compile some source code into binaries.

When you do "make install", the make program takes the binaries from the previous step and copies them into some appropriate locations so that they can be accessed. Unlike on Windows, installation just requires copying some libraries and executables and there is no registry requirement as such. In short, "make install" just copies compiled files into appropriate locations.

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make install does whatever the Makefile author wants it to do. Typically, by this point, it is too late to change the install directory, as it is often known earlier, during the build, so help files and configuration files can be referenced with the correct pathnames.

Many projects use the GNU Autotools to try to improve their portability among hardware and operating system differences. (Different Unix variants use slightly different headers for declarations of functions that are slightly off the usual path -- except most programs need one or another of the ones declared in different locations.)

When a project does use the Autotools, the normal mantra to install it is:

./configure
make
make install

The ./configure typically allows you to use a command line option like --prefix /opt/apache or something similar to specify a different pathname. /usr/local/ is a common default prefix. It is far easier for locally built software to live in one place and distribution-provided software to live in the "main directories": /usr/ /bin/, and so on. (Packagers are very careful to never touch files in /usr/local/ -- they know it is exclusively for system administrators.)

Anyway, the ./configure --prefix /path/to/new/prefix will set a variable in the Makefile that is available when compiling the program, modifying the manual pages so they point to the correct locations for files, modifying configuration files, etc. So make will build the software specifically for the install location you want and make install will install it into that location.

Most programs can run even without the final make install step -- just ./program_name will often start them up. This is definitely a per-project thing -- some, like postfix, qmail, etc., are made up of many different moving pieces and rely on them all working together. Others, like ls or su might be self-contained enough to execute fine from the directory they were built in. (This is not often useful -- but sometimes very useful.)

However, not all projects use the Autotools -- they are huge, complicated, and miserable to maintain. Hand-written Makefiles are much simpler to write, and I personally think just distributing a simple Makefile with configuration variables available is a lot easier on developers and users both. (Though the ./configure ; make ; make install mantra is really easy on users when it works.)

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Linux Hint
linuxhint.com โ€บ install-make-ubuntu
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tldp.org โ€บ HOWTO โ€บ Software-Building-HOWTO-3.html
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reddit.com โ€บ r/linux โ€บ why "sudo make install"?
r/linux on Reddit: Why "sudo make install"?
September 14, 2023 -

Why do that many projects recommend to push compiled binaries to the filesystem root?

edit Ok. I might have been wrong. My /usr/local ist empty. If stuff only gets installed there, my argument is invalid. I still feel pretty insecure about doing a make install, because it at least could conflict with the system installation.

Thanks for answering. /edit

I have a folder ~/usr where I push all compiled stuff. I then do cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/usr/ or ./configure --prefix ... and then install that without sudo. Some big projects I compile even have their own prefix.

Sure you have to tell your users to have ~/usr/bin in your PATH. I also added that to my LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH. But IMO that should be a default thing to do for Linux users (who compile stuff).

Polluting your distro installation with random crap is a sure way to get issues later. Its far worse then anything you can do to install Software on Windows.

I mean compiling a bleeding edge kicad, inkscape or jpeg-xl is easy. But will probably trash your system if you already have an older version installed.

(Some projects tell you to build a distro package and sudo install that. Much better, but I still prefer having the binaries in my own prefix. Also a lot got better, since many big projects publish daily snapshots as Appimage or similar.)

edit2 I was of course talking about a single-user system for users who sometimes like to test bleeding edge software. Not Multi-user sytems. Not Grandma, who's not allowed to install stuff. edit

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University of Texas
cs.utexas.edu โ€บ ~moore โ€บ acl2 โ€บ v6-3 โ€บ installation โ€บ installing-make.html
ACL2 Version 6.3 Installation Guide: Installing Make
Arrange that the new make 3.80 is your default make. For example, if ~/bin at (or sufficiently near) the front of your PATH and DIR is the directory in which you downloaded make-3.80.tar.gz as above, you can do this: ... Test that you have installed make 3.80 as your default make.
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