How to Get MySQL After choosing which MySQL version to install, decide which distribution format to install for your operating system. For most use cases, a binary distribution is the right choice. Binary distributions are available in native format for many platforms, such as RPM packages for Linux or DMG packages for macOS. Distributions are also available in more generic formats such as Zip archives or compressed  tar  files. On Windows, you can use the MySQL Installer to install a binary distribution. Under some circumstances, it may be preferable to install MySQL from a source distribution: 2.1.3 How to Get MySQL 2.1.4 Verifying Package Integrity Using MD5 Checksums or GnuPG After downloading the MySQL package that suits your needs and before attempting to install it, make sure that it is intact and has not been tampered with. There are three means of integrity checking: 97 •For RPM packages, the built-in RPM integrity verification mechanism •Cryptographic signatures using  GnuPG , the GNU Privacy Guard •MD5 checksums To obtain the latest development source, see Section 2.9.5, “Installing MySQL Using a Development Source Tree” . For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) platforms, MySQL can be installed using the MySQL SLES Repository. See Section 2.5.3, “Installing MySQL on Linux Using the MySQL SLES Repository”  for details. For Debian-based Linux platforms, MySQL can be installed using the MySQL APT Repository. See Section 2.5.2, “Installing MySQL on Linux Using the MySQL APT Repository”  for details. For RPM-based Linux platforms that use Yum as their package management system, MySQL can be installed using the MySQL Yum Repository. See Section 2.5.1, “Installing MySQL on Linux Using the MySQL Yum Repository”  for details. Check our downloads page at https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/ for information about the current version of MySQL and for downloading instructions. •Source distributions contain more tests and examples than binary distributions. •You want to read or modify the C and C++ code that makes up MySQL. For this purpose, obtain a source distribution. •You want to configure  mysqld  without some features that are included in the standard binary distributions. • -DWITH_DEBUG=1  for debugging support • -DWITH_ZLIB={system|bundled}  for features that depend on compression • -DWITH_LIBWRAP=1  for TCP wrappers support. •You want to configure  mysqld  with features that might not be included in the standard binary distributions. Here is a list of the most common extra options used to ensure feature availability: •You want to install MySQL at some explicit location. The standard binary distributions are ready to run at any installation location, but you might require even more flexibility to place MySQL components where you want. For additional information, see Section 2.9.7, “MySQL Source-Configuration Options” .