Installing SpatiaLite on Linux

SpatiaLite and VirtualShape are SQLite extensions, so you need to install SQLite too, in order to allow them to operate.
There are various alternative ways you can follow at your choice:

the standard distribution way:
- presumably your preferred Linux distro supports the sqlite3 package.
  Very easily you have it already installed on your system
- you simply have to get the spatialite-linux-i686-1.0.tar.gz
- gunzip it somewhere [see note about shared libraries]
- then you start sqlite3 and after .load 'SpatiaLite.so'
  If this works, you are ready to start
- Caveat: some distros [Fedora and CentOs for sure] distributes older versions of sqlite3 and sqlite3.so, or have the extension loading mechanism disabled anyway
the doing it by hand way:
- go to the SQLite downloads and get the latest sqlite-version.bin.gz and sqlite-version.so.gz
- get the spatialite-linux-i686-1.0.tar.gz
- gunzip what you've just downloaded, placing binaries and shared libraries somewhere [see note about shared libraries]
- to get started you can launch the sqlite3 program, and then .load 'SpatiaLite.so'
  That's all
the GUI tool way:
- you can find lots of GUI tools supporting SQLite.
  May well be one of them supports extensions loading; all the ones I tested refused to do this.
- If you have best luck than me, then you simply have to get the spatialite-linux-i686-1.0.tar.gz
- gunzip it somewhere [see note about shared libraries]
- then you start you preferred SQLite GUI tool and after .load 'SpatiaLite.so'
  If this works, you are ready to start

the SQLiteGeo way:

if you think the first two ways are too complicated for you, get the sqlitegeo-linux-i686-1.0.tar.gz
this one is simply a standard sqlite3 slightly modified in order to support automatically loading for SpatiaLite and VirtualShape, and does not requires the sqlite3.so shared library to be installed at all
gunzip what you've just downloaded, placing binaries and shared libraries somewhere [see note about shared libraries]
to get started you can launch the SQLiteGeo program. That's all.
[you have not to type .load 'SpatiaLite.so' at all; it's implicit]

the SQLiteGeo package contains a copy of the libproj.so shared library.
[libproj.so doesn't seems to be widely available; many Linux distros offers no support at all]
but if your Linux system supports some kind of proj4 package its better you install and use the official one, to avoid any confusion.

Then I suggest you to download the test.db database and follow the tutorial step by step;
it's the fastest way to become accustomed with SpatiaLite and VirtualShape

Linux 64 bits architecture is supported by corresponding xxxx-linux-x86_64-xxxxx packages.
Very unlikely SQLite and SpatiaLite will be used to manage huge databases, so there is no good reason to use them at all.
[the main reason to use a 64 bits architecture is in that you are not constrained by the 4 GB memory limit implied by the 32 bits architecture].
Anyway, they are here.

Managing shared libraries

On Linux systems, shared libraries are identified by a .so suffix
Usually they have a plain name i.e. somelib.so, but usually they supports a version name as well, i.e. somelib.so.1.0
Usually this is accomplished simply by creating a symbolic link, as in:

$ ln -s somelib.so.1.0 somelib.so

Usually shared libraries must be placed in the /usr/lib directory

or in the /usr/lib64 directory if they use the 64 bits architecture

You can as well keep yours shared libraries in any other directory at your choice, but in this case you have to set en environment variable, as in:

$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/user_name/my_preferred_so_dir
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH