Total newb looking for best way to install software.
 

Hi all
Being a newb to LInux, my first experience is that there are lots of things I like about it. (I am using Ubuntu 8.04 32 bit)
I have had some huge frustrations though. Firstly I installed 64 bit version, and the graphics driver didn't work, making the resolution horrible and my screen that was so dark it was unreadable until I finally found the applet for brightness.
Installing the graphics driver just didn't work so I gave up and installed the 32 bit version.
Now my general question is getting nice software to install.
If I download some from my browser onto the desktop, some package has a facitity to right click and open with some smart package installer. I like this. I don't want to be going to the real terminal and typing commands in there.
The other way seems to be to go Places-Admin-Software Sources and under the third party, enter an APT line for a depository website. This is not self explanatory or intuitive. Has anyone found the easy trick to this and what sort of websites would be suitable?
Matthew

This is done by editing a file (/etc/apt/sources.list) and adding the repositories of packages you want.

I don't use Ubuntu, so I haven't test this, but this page proposes these edits to sources.list for your version of Ubuntu.

There's also the option of using Synaptic, it must be somewhere on your system, if I remember well it lists all the available packages and I think you can search for packages using keywords.

If it's not, install it from a terminal (apt-get install synaptic).

If you use the synaptic package manager, (System, admin., synaptic), you have about 26,000 packages to choose from. 90% of everything I ever needed on ubuntu was in the package manager. Just click the little tick box, click apply at the top, and everything else happens automatically (aside from clicking 'install' once or twice)