Hello, I am new to Linux and am having problems installing stuff. Are there websites with newbie guides for people like me? Thanks.

well first is the question...what distro?? You should have told us that and put it in your profile to the left of your question.

You have found one of the best sites. Browse around, look at tutorials and ask specific questions. Include your distro, what machine, distro youo're trying to use, etc

Well I have Redhat 9.0, and I tried to install gaim and it requires some packages, but when i do /.config then make and make install, everything checks out ok, but when i try to install gaim again it says i need to install the package (that i just installed!)

The easiest way would probably be to search for the packages you need in RPM format. RPM packages are already compiled so you don't need to type ./configure, make, and make install.

Let's say that gaim said you needed dependentpackageA and dependentpackageB. Then you search for Red Hat 9 RPM versions of dependentpackageA and dependentpackageB and download them. Their file names will look something like dependentpackageA-<version number>.<package author>.<computer architecture package is designed for>.rh9.rpm.

Then you do this at the command line as root:

rpm -Uvh gaim* dependentpackageA* dependentpackageB*

All on the same line.

Go here. It's perhaps the best newbie guide available.

Read a little bit of it. Then, once you realize how invaluable it is, click the link at the top that says 'Download HTML', because you're gonna want to read the whole thing.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

This man is correct, just beware Acid_kewpie's snake tongue,
he apparently has some social problems or something.

yeah, good way to get around... insult moderators.... hmmm..