OK Still a little green using UBUNTU 8.1
Installing debian files is ok but can I install .tar or compile from source?
If so what do I need?

Look at "How to install ANYTHING in Ubuntu!" on http://amitech.50webs.com/installing/index.php.html and "Installing Software in Ubuntu" on http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installingsoftware

Your FIRST action should always be to download from the repositories. Your VERY LAST action should be to compile...

It depends what you've downloaded, or, more specifically, how it is compressed etc. with regards to 'tar'

'tar' is just a way of archiving, on top of that you usually compress it, whether it ends in
.tar.gz || .tgz
.tar.bz2 || .tbz2

or even just .tar- you need to 'unpack' it as it were, see for your options, but basically for a gzip'd tar archive;
where x means extract, v is for verbosity, z is for gzip and f is for preserve file structure

Similarly a j instead of the z will do for bzip and neither will do for pure file.tar

When compiling from source your best way is to do a quick ls to see whether or not there is a README or INSTALL file. The convention is the three part (Though be aware that this means you have to manually grab the dependencies, this wont do it for you)

Some apps, especially certain apache ones (or last time I spent any time with them) use their own methods of installation, as do such things as wicd- so looking in the directory structure is your best bet.

That help?

Also if you plan to compile you need to setup your compile environment,..

sudo apt-get install module-assistant build-essential
sudo m-a update && sudo m-a prepare

Now you will actually be able to do something with those source applications/drivers you've downloaded.