installing problm

[Hitha Nambiar]

i am trying to configure and install  Apache When I download the file and e
xtract it from the tar file . However, when I try to configure it I
get an error
ressponse that says 

 ERROR: could not find a C compiler  

 I then searched the internet and found gcc, but when i tried to
configure it is said
configuring for a  i86-pc-linux-gnuoldld host
created makefile in home/cvsroot/gcc-3.0.4 using mt-frag
./configure  :cc: comand not found
 *** The command 'cc -o conftest -g conftest.c' failed. 
*** You must set the environment variable CC to a working compiler. 

 I am about as new as you can be in linux 
please tell me how ill set the environment variable cc to a working compiler
Hitha