RedHat 6.2 installation on my Sony VAIO was a breeze, and I have since installed all of the relevant updates as of November 9, 2000. That much is good. However, when I "make" a complicated source tree I frequently get compiler crashes reporting "internal compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 11". Typically I can restart the make and it will pick up where it left off. This happened half a dozen times as I built a new kernel from the stock 2.2.17 source (the running kernel was 2.2.14-whatever from the original RPM). It has since happened as I built the pcmcia utilities for my new kernel (under my new kernel). So far I have seen no other sign of system instability. "gcc --version" reports egcs-2.91.66 The system also dual boots Windows 98, and I have seen no evidence of any kind instability there (but then, it's Windows -- how would I know? :-) )
If the segfaults are not reproduceable (go away when you start gcc on the same file next time), then it is 99.5% bad hardware (either memory chip problems, or overheated CPU, or something of that kind). A compilation stresses the machine much more than plain running X or Win9x. So, please check out whether if you get segfault on a particular file that if you run the same command again it segfaults again. If not, please check your hardware.