Downloading and installing libpng from a distro

Ubuntu, Debian, Mint (apt-based systems)

sudo apt-get install libpng-dev

on an x86_64 Ubuntu system, this installs libpng version 1.2.x in

libpng12.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng12.so.0

Fedora, RHEL, CentOS (yum-based systems)

sudo yum install libpng-devel