I am running Suse 9.1 and I'm trying to install Python 2.3.4 but I can't figure out how to compile it or anything any kind of help would be appreciated.

You should be able to install Python from packages (RPM files). Is there a reason you're trying to compile it?

You can't download it like that. Go to the Python website and maybe you can understand how to install it.

Do you really need version 2.3.4? It looks that 2.3.3 is included in your distribution. You can download it for example from here: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.1....3-85.i586.rpm (also get other python* packages). It should be also on your installation cd.

If you prefer 2.3.4 I can't see an RPM for you, so it means you need to start from source: http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.3...-2.3.4.tar.bz2
Save it somewhere, then open a terminal, cd to the directory you have it in and run
tar jxvf Python-2.3.4.tar.bz2
It'll unpack it. When finished, you should be able to find INSTALL or README file with installation instructions. Standard procedure is
./configure
make
su
(root password when asked)
make install
It should work with this case, too. I haven't checked, because the archive is nearly 8MB and that's too much for me.