Any reason you can't use your distro's package manager? In Ubuntu it should be something like "sudo apt-get install gcc" (or search for GCC in the graphical interface, mark it and click install).
Compiling GCC can be somewhat difficult and takes a while to finish. Considering you're completely lost I suggest you avoid compiling it yourself for now.

One more thing: you are using GNU/Linux (or some other *nix), right? I ask because the Windows GCC port is called MinGW. Read here http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started for instructions on how to install it. There's a x86_64 version of it too, I'm not sure if you can get it from the official website, though. Or you can install GCC from Cygwin, instructions here: http://cygwin.com/install.html


.sum: checksum/hash for the files. It allows you to know if the downloaded file is broken and should be downloaded again

.tar.bz2: compressed archive (like .zip). You can extract it with "tar xjf filename.tar.bz2", or with 7-zip (which will extract a .tar, and you'll have to extract the .tar too to get the files).

>>275
I should've pointed that out, sorry. I'm using Windows 7! I know, rookie move. I would really like to download Ubuntu, but I'm a bit hesitant considering I've never used it. I should probably learn a bit before I throw myself off the deep end.

Thank you for the link though - I downloaded MinGW and it has been working! Also, thank you for the explanation on .sum and .tarbz2

btw, code:blocks has gcc included as default compiler

Look up the MinGW suite. It's the windows version of GCC

I'd recommend just installing a distro like ubuntu, mint, ect. Otherwise you are just going to have to learn how to install programs like gcc and tar all over again.

If you really want to do everything in windows 7 before you install a linux distro try cygwin. It's a unix environment for the windows desktop and will let you install all kinds of unix programs

Also have you tried installing a linux distro into a virtual machine like virtualbox? its ridiculously easy to do.

rude