How do I install a .tar.gz (or .tar.bz2) file in ubuntu?

The first thing you need to do is extracting it in a folder, let's make it your desktop. You can extract an archive right clicking on it and choosing the appropriate entry. It should create a new folder with a similar name, e.g. program-1.2.3. Now you need to open your terminal and then go to that directory: cd /home/yourusername/Desktop/program-1.2.3 OR  you can right click inside the program folder that you need to install and select open in terminal Make sure you first read a file called INSTALL or INSTALL.txt or README. Check if there is any of these files with the ls command, and then display the right one with: xdg-open INSTALL The file will contain the right indications to go on with the compiling process. Usually the three "classical" steps are: ./configure make sudo make install type these commands one by one in terminal that you have opened You may also need to install some dependencies, generally after some configure error which will tell you what you are missing. You can also use checkinstall instead of make install. See here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CheckInstall   here you will find there is no package found error for some files that means these files are required and these are not preinstalled so we need to install it for this you can use synaptic package manager you can install it from ubuntu software center and install it from there after installing open this and type in the search bar and click apply that will instll do for evvery package error that is not found and repeat the same process from starting upto sudo make install.