psa,
Seems to me that configure is not able to find your C compiler. Are you sure you have one installed? If you do, maybe your PATH variable is incorrectly set.
I don't know linspire, but if this fits you, you should not drop that easy. For other distros, I can recommend you debian (have tried and liked it) and gentoo (never tried, but lots of people use). I personally use Fedora Core 1, for historical and work reasons

but if Fedora continues to drop quality, that will not last.
Cheers!