no-rc5 no-idea: When added to the ./config command, this will eliminate the building of those encryption methods. Patent licenses may be needed for you to utilize either of those methods in your projects. rm doc/apps/passwd.pod : We do this because otherwise OpenSSL installs its passwd man page over the existing system one which isn't what we want. make MANDIR=/usr/share/man make MANDIR=/usr/share/man install These commands install OpenSSL with the man pages in /usr/share/man instead of the default which is /etc/ssl/man. rmdir /etc/ssl/lib: This is simply a tidy-up command. For some reason, the openssl install routine creates the /etc/ssl/lib directory even though the libraries have been installed in /usr/lib . We remove it to keep things nice and tidy!