This is right PLACE for me... from the questions I have read. (sounds like no question is considered dum
This sort of a programming question, but developers would consider this question too basic.. so its here.

I downloaded gnu classpath 97.2
./configure
make
su make install

and I downloaded cacao 99.1
./configure
make
su make install

no errors
but when I enter

cacao

it says its not installed. (both ubuntu 8.04 (sudo=su and makeclean install = make install) and fedora)

I used the default prefix /usr/local
/usr/local/bin is in $PATH
cacao is in /usr/local/cacao/bin and classpath is in /usr/local/classpath

I think I have to do SOMETHING so the prefix path is picked up, but I dont know what.
Can someone HELP me tell linux how to see what I installed?
Thanks
To verify your suggestion, try this command--just type it:

PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/cacao/bin"

And then try to execute cacao again. If it works, you could put that in ~/.bashrc (or maybe ~/.bash_profile).

Alternately, if it's just that one EXECUTABLE, you could make symbolic LINKS like this:

cd /usr/local/bin
su ln -s ../cacao/bin/cacao