I am a windows-converted-to-linux person, and not by choice, which means that I am completely and utterly linux/unix illiterate. I am trying my best, but I need some deffinite help.

Okay, I downloaded the gtk.gnutella.0.92.1c and then followed the instrutions in the INSTALL document. I went into the terminal, cd to the directory it was in, then did the commands "make" followed by "make install". everything seemed to go okay and I found a file called gtk-gnutella right where INSTALL said it should be in /usr/local/bin. however, nothing happens when I run the program. I don't get a message or anything. I can get a screenshot of the terminal and/or /usr/local/bin if you need it, but please help!

you were trying to run gtk-gnutella from a terminal and all it does is quit quietly??
does it look like this in your terminal:

I didn't try to run it in the terminal. I just tried running it from the screen....my terminal doesn't recognize /usr/local/bin/gtk-gnutella as a directory...sorry if i sound really stupid about linux, it's just that i have very little knowledge about what i am doing...i'm just very confused about it.

I went into "my computer" and then switched the location to /usr/local/bin and the file is right there....when i tried putting /usr/local/bin/gtk-gnutella in, it gives me this message:

Nautilus has no installed viewer capable of displaying "/usr/local/bin/gtk-gnutella".

Help?

What do you mean, your terminal doesn't recognize /usr/local/bin/gtk-gnutella as a directory???
If you enter "/usr/local/bin/gtk-gnutella" it should execute the command and possibly give you an error message. - Without that error message, I won't be able to tell you what's wrong.