Hi everyone,
I am a newbie, and have been using Linux for a couple of weeks now. For some reason GAIM does not seem to work any more. I use Mandriva 2006.
So I went to install pidgin, where it said that it needed gtk. In turn I need glib and pango and all the associated, like cairo,atk,etc.
For each of the above I downloaded the tar, extracted it to my desktop and tried
$./configure
$./make
$ ./make install
I did log in as root.
But it is not working. No detailed help is also available.

One kind of error I get, about
"nothing to do about install-am"
type, can anyone please tell me what in the heaven's name that could mean?
I will be glad if you can help me with this.

Use the package manager for Mandriva or use RPM's. Don't try to build everything yourself.

If you insist on building from source, use this website as a guide...http://cblfs.cross-lfs.org/index.php/Main_Page