Compiling fails..missing something?

["Mark Holloway" <mholloway flashmail com>]

This is the ultimate newbie question so don't laugh too hard.. (hey, that's
what the list is for, right?)

I installed Red Hat 6.0 from CD, applied some updated RPMs, and everything
works fine except one thing.. [btw, this applies to Alpha and x86, so I know
I'm overlooking something]

When I download and installed RPMs everything is great.  When I download and
compile programs they always fail.  In FreeBSD or Solaris I would typically
download the source -> tar zxvf whatever.tar.gz -> ./configure -> make ->
make install -> make clean [you get the idea].

Only on Red Hat do I get:

./configure
creating cache ./config.cache
checking whether build environment is sane..yes
checking whether make sets $<MAKE>..no
checking for working aclocal..missing
checking for working autoconf..missing
checking for working automake..missing
checking for working autoheader..missing
checking for working autoinfo..missing
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C (gcc) compiler works..no

....error. C compiler cannot create executables.


What the heck am I overlooking?

Thanks,
Mark