Okay, first off I have never managed to succefully install a tarball before, and this is the first time that when I typed in the ./configure command that it came up with a bunch of stuff, but then it stopped with this message -

checking for X... configure: error: Can't find X includes. Please check your installation and add the correct paths!

anyone know what that means and how I can fix it? do I need to install something that I dont have? If so what, and where would I get it?

Thanks

If it's SuSE you probably need the equivalent of an 'x devel' package. There's an rpm (or whatever) for it wherever you got what X you do have.

I dont understand, you know what package it is I would have to download? sorry, I am very new to all this

Something like 'xorg-x11-devel-6.8.1-14.1.i586.rpm' which you might find at places like this http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3 .

Basically, rpm's are divided (for some weird reason) into stuff you need to run things and stuff you need to be able to compile things. So headers and whatnot are usually in devel packages named after a similar pattern of the 'user' packages.

-- But don't take that name literally - make sure you know your X variant and version and your SuSE version and so on and get the right one - the above is just a guess. I think SuSE has some kind of automatic thingamajig that will grab the right package for your system automatically, right? Just tell it you want the x devel package.

The best way to find out what an error means is to post it here like you did or search for similar errors on google. The package thats needed on your system is the xorg development package. Install this with YAST by using the search function and the keyword "xorg" (the package you need is xorg-devel or something similar). If you are a newbie try not to use packages from site like rpmfind because they may not match the versions on your system or may coz a lot more problems than using the official ones from you distribution.

I had a look for xorg in yast but I could find it in the online update either, it doesnt seem to be avaialble for suse 9.1, does this mean I can install no tarballs?

Every Linux distribution can install tarballs. If I'm not mistaken, all you should need to do is tell ./configure to look in /usr/X11R6/include/X11/ for the right files, but if you don't have the devel package, then yeah, you're going to have to install those first.