ALlright I know that this is probley a really stupid question, but I cant figure this out for the life of me. Whenever I try to install a program from the terminal and it tells me to put in something like

cd xchat-x.x.x
./configure

It says that it does not reconize the command. I am having this trouble when trying to install Phoenix and other things to. I have no idea how to run the script and there guides to installing never explain it. If You could help I would appreciate it.

Hopefully, you have untarred and unzipped the tarball... if not, for:

xchat.yada-1.0.tar.gz ----> tar xvzf xchat.yada-1.0.tar.gz
xchat.yada-1.0.tar.bz2 ----> tar jxvf xchat.yada-1.0.tar.bz2

this will set up a directory with the package's name: xchat.yada-1.0

cd xchat.yada-1.0
read README or INSTALL with less or more
usually you're going to get this:
./configure
make
make install

Now with some packages, like Phoenix, you're going to get an install shell script called (usually): install.sh or install-sh

You'll run: ./install.sh and then the package will be installed from there. This means it is a precompiled binary. Whenever possible, it's best to compile from source on your own box.

Good luck.

which command is not recognized - the
cd /path/to/file
or the
./configure?
do u have a compiler on ur box? test
gcc -v
perl installed? test
perl -v

the configure command runs a script in that directory that gathers some options and information how to comple your program->translate source code to binary.
u need a compiler for building programs from source. if u don't have one on your box get a binary version of gcc.
cheers, jens