binary packages.... Sorry... I am lacking in the knowledge of all the many different libraries that apparently can be used with MinGW... or any compiler for that matter...
Also... mabey someone could brief me on any standard procedures involved in installing libraries... you know, the stuff no one ever says, because I can tell there is obviously some information missing in the instructions that they assume I'm supposed to know.
A binary package is just a precompiled package. So you don't have to build it yourself.
Installing a library is pretty simple. It just seems like a huge pain at first. All it takes is sticking the .lib files in some directory, and .h files in another. Then you tell your linker to point to the directory of the .lib files, and set your include path to include the directory of the .h files. This varies between IDEs and compilers.