So I've gone and installed Ubuntu on the family computer. How does one go about installing Linux software that he finds on the Web?

To get windows software to install you will have to get wine. Its a type of emulator (but not really) that lets you install windows programs and run them through it.

As for tar.gz format compression thingies, I’m not that great at linux yet either. But I’ve always just gone to the Ubuntu Software centre and searched to find the software rather than from the site. It’ll find it 95% of the time I’d say

You can look up the CLI syntax for each installation, as each might need different libraries to function properly. I think Ubuntu might have an installer, too: $ Man install

It depends, but there are some “tarballs” that install merely by unzipping them. That is how I got a version of Firefox that was too new to be in the Canonical repositories yet. Others require you to open a terminal and do a little CLI work, but those often have directions on the site where you get them that tell you exactly what you need to type in (it varies a little sometimes).

As for running Windows stuff, you need WINE and a few other things. However, if you install WINE through Synaptic, it’ll download/install that “other stuff” automatically.

Installing packages via the package manager (Synaptic) is the best way of going about things. If the package you desire isn’t in the repositories, you could go about adding them (it’s just two lines of code), or you could look around for a .deb package. If you’re talking about a game, this is probably your best bet. Check out www.getdeb.net, or just Google ”<insert game name> .deb package”. Installing from source (tarball) should be a last resort, and it isn’t really recommended, especially for newbies.

Edit: As others have said, you’ll need WINE to run Windows software. However, this is pretty hit-or-miss, and often requires some troubleshooting. Normally there is a suitable Linux alternative for whatever program you’re looking to install. Check out this page to find them.

You could try Ubucompilator.

Some programs for which you only have source code will have to be compiled on your computer.

Something like the following commands are typical compiler commands.

sudo ./configure; sudo make; sudo make install;