building from source for dummies?

[Tom Horsley]

> What exactly do you need to know?  Are you looking for how to install 
> patches?  Or just build the source RPM?

I figure the first step is just getting the source rpm built so I can verify I can
build a radeon module that is equally broken as the one that comes with FC6
(broken for my monitor, that is).

If I can get that build to work, I'm sure I'll be able to apply some of the
patches mentioned in the bugzillas and rebuild to see if I can get it working
better, but mostly I know nothing about unpacking and building source
rpms (especially of kernel modules like video drivers).

Here's my xorg bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8790
(with pointers to a probably related bug that has various patches).