Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Pope
A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.
configure is a script generated (usually) by autoconf, in order to adapt the source and the compilation/linking/installation process to the given environment and the users requirements. Usually, it's about optional components, or mutually exclusive options (Apache example would be the worker type: prefork, threaded, mpm)
make is a common utility on UNIX, a kind of rule based scripting, which is used for compiling most of the time. Usually, when invoked without without parameters, it executes the default rule "all". Other often seen rules are "install", "clean", or "depend". The rules are, by default, defined in the "Makefile".
If you want to know more, read up on make in general, the make available with your platform and maybe autoconf and automake. The configure script isn't part of the OS, but is always part of the software it ships with, if it's even there.
Difference between configure/make/make install.