I feel super dumb asking this. But what actually is and how does github (or similar sites) work? Are they all just source files one needs to manually compile? I am always confused when I look at a github page. I know some have directions but they still go way over my head sometimes. Im not a total noob but some of this stuff seems like you need to be in programming and have an IDE just to run a program.
If you do come across something you really want to try on github, and it doesn’t have a pre-compiled version. It’s actually not that scary to compile it yourself. If they don’t give any instructions for compiling it, that generally means you can leave everything as default on the compiler. You can change any optional settings to tailor it to your use case. Generally just looking at the options and reading the helpful hints, it all ends up being pretty self-explanatory. But of course, if anything gives you trouble, there are plenty of places to get help too.