$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libirrlicht-dev cmake libbz2-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libxxf86vm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev \
  libsqlite3-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libopenal-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libfreetype6-dev zlib1g-dev libgmp-dev libjsoncpp-dev

$ mkdir ~/apps
$ cd ~/apps
$ wget -O mtmaster.tar.gz https://github.com/minetest/minetest/archive/0.4.17.1.tar.gz
$ tar xf mtmaster.tar.gz
$ mv minetest-0.4.17.1 minetest
$ cd minetest/games/
$ wget -O mtgamemaster.tar.gz https://github.com/minetest/minetest_game/archive/0.4.17.tar.gz
$ tar xf mtgamemaster.tar.gz
$ mv minetest_game-0.4.17 minetest_game
$ rm mtgamemaster.tar.gz
$ cd ..

$ cmake . -DRUN_IN_PLACE=TRUE
$ make -j <#CPUs>

$ ./bin/minetest --server

On older versions of Ubuntu/Debian Linux the libjpeg62-turbo-dev package does not exist and the Minetest apt-get install shit fails. The proper package name on these old distros is libjpeg8-dev and info can be found here.

Package libjpeg8-dev is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
libjpeg62-turbo-dev:i386 libjpeg62-turbo-dev

sudo apt-get install -y libirrlicht-dev libgettextpo0 libfreetype6-dev \
    libbz2-dev libpng12-dev libjpeg8-dev libxxf86vm-dev \
    libgl1-mesa-dev libsqlite3-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev \
    libopenal-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libluajit-5.1-dev \
    liblua5.1-0-dev libleveldb-dev