Compiler woes

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I have had the worst time compiling anything GNU/Linux-related. GCC just randomly breaks, and I can't do ./configure + make on anything without it taking ages (more than 2 hours) to check if everything works and compiling the sources. And when it "finishes" it was actually due to a compiler error that occurred a couple dozen files ago! Also, autoconf tends to tell me that gcc can't create executables when it's just because it doesn't know what to make of a single little unrecognized argument.

Oh yeah, not to mention that all of these tools are completely out of the box. Why can't it just work...?