I wouldn't be scared of building from source: it's fun and rewarding. The only big problem you'll have is the same problem you're already having: dependencies. To get around the dependency problem, you'll need a package manager.
Hmmmm. You can install Yum, which is what'd you'd get on Fedora instead of up2date...It's pretty good at handling dependencies, and googling Yum and RHEL and Repository gives a good number of hits, so there are repositories out there which will have RPMs built for your system.
If it were me, I'd probably go ahead and upgrade KDE and Gnome, if it was that important to install the newer version of samba (that's a lie actually. I love the command line, so I'd just go ahead and break kde and gnome and not look back). Resolving this sort of dependency problem is what it's all about.
CAUTION The answer about changing the UNIX password for "postgres" through "$ sudo passwd postgres" is not preferred, and can even be DANGEROUS!
This is why: By default, the UNIX account "postgres" is locked, which means it cannot be logged in using a password. If you use "sudo passwd postgres", the account is immediately unlocked. Worse, if you set the password to something weak, like "postgres", then you are exposed to a great security danger. For example, there are a number of bots out there trying the username/password combo "postgres/postgres" to log into your UNIX system.
What you should do is follow Chris James's answer:
sudo -u postgres psql postgres
# \password postgres
Enter new password:
To explain it a little bit. There are usually two default ways to login to PostgreSQL server:
By running the "psql" command as a UNIX user (so-called IDENT/PEER authentication), e.g.: sudo -u postgres psql. Note that sudo -u does NOT unlock the UNIX user.
by TCP/IP connection using PostgreSQL's own managed username/password (so-called TCP authentication) (i.e., NOT the UNIX password).
So you never want to set the password for UNIX account "postgres". Leave it locked as it is by default.
Of course things can change if you configure it differently from the default setting. For example, one could sync the PostgreSQL password with UNIX password and only allow local logins. That would be beyond the scope of this question.
Best Answer
You have installed the repository that makes PostgreSQL packages available (check
/etc/yum.repos.d). Now you can doyum updateand actually install the DB withyum install postgresql96-server.