Here's how I installed VICE (2.4) on Ubuntu:

 tar -xf vice-2.4.tar.gz 
 cd vice-2.4
 sudo apt-get install libxaw7-dev
 sudo apt-get install libxmu-dev
 sudo apt-get install libreadline-dev
 ./configure 
 make
 sudo make install
 /usr/local/bin/x64
 

This makes it very x-windowsy. To make it work better with GNOME, do the following:

   sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev
   sudo apt-get install libvte-dev
   ./configure --enable-gnomeui
   make clean
   make
   sudo make install
   /usr/local/bin/x64