Okay, I succesfully installed Redhat Linux 7.2 on my comp. I got some Linux drivers for my network card off the manufacturers site, but said driver is just some C source code. Does anybody have any idea what I do with it? Sorry for being vague... any help is greatly appreciated.

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first untar it, read the README file in it directory and follow the instructions.

the simplest way might be, but not for sure.
$ tar zxvf drive.tgz
$ cd the-directory
$ make
$ make install

It didn't work...the driver i download was just one page of C code, and my main question is how do I compile and run it.

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Any decent driver should include instructions on how to compile/install it. Check the documentation that came with it. If it didnt include documentation, check the vendor website for instructions.

In general you compile a program with:

gcc -o output_file yourcode.c

Thanks for your replies everybody, but it turns out that the problem isn't my drivers, but it appears to be something different:

When Linux (Redhat 7.2, kernel 2.4.7) starts up, and the system is initializing all the devices, "eth0" always gets an error stating: "Could not get IP information", or something similiar. What makes the problem even more confusing is that when I run the program "usernet", it shows that the network card is receiving data, but when I try to run an internet-related application (Mozilla, gAIM, etc.) I just get errors. I have all my IP information in hand, but I just don't know where to input the info so Linux recognizes eth0 as my internet device.

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