[Xastir] New build problems

[KD1YV]

Hi, listies.
/Newbie-mode-on
I'm still fairly new at this, so please excuse my ignorance.

I have a newly-installed Suse 9.1 system.

I managed to complete building Xastir 1.4.0, but without ImageMagick,
since configure reported that he could not find the ImageMagick
libraries. I'm working on that, but now have developed another error.
When I run make, with or without the ImageMagick included, I now get a
gcc error as follows:

/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-suse-linux/3.3.3/../../../../i586-suse-linux/bin/ld: 


cannot find -lz

I'm assuming that z is a library, and the -l is a parm to give the
compiler the library name.  Now for the questions
1)  Where should z be and why would it have disappeared after my
earlier
successful build?
2)  Who the hell would name a library z? (Haha, just kidding)
3)  I installed ImageMagick 6.1.0-1.  Why can't the configure script
find it?  During my frustration, I also installed ImageMagick-devel and
ImageMagick-C++.  I hope that these would not have any ill effects.
4)  Where is the FAQ for this group/mailing list?
5)  Is this mailing list searchable so that I could research some of
this stuff before asking my questions here?

/Newbie-mode-off