See http://mesa.sourceforge.net/getting_started.html#install
   (see below about using mesasdk)
   
For stellar evolution, you should read through this page: 
   http://mesa.sourceforge.net/how_to_use_mesa_star.html
   
See http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~townsend/static.php?ref=mesasdk

If you are not going to use the mesasdk, and you are running (k)Ubuntu,
you should know about some extra dependencies.  Pieter Degroote reports
that you will probably need these from the package repository:
   - libpng12-dev (version >=1.2.46) (Library implementing an interface for reading and writing PNG format files)
   - libx11-dev (version >= 1.4.4) (Client interface to the X-window system, otherwise known as Xlib
   - csh (version >= 20110502) (C-shell)

