New to linux, how do i compile from tarballs?

[Logrus]

The simple answer is to do a google for

name of program debian

But a tool which will help is Synaptic. It's a GUI front end for apt-get and will list all programs available (but note that what is available will depend on your sources.list). To install Synaptic connect to the internet. As root (su to root) do:

apt-get update

when that's finished, (still as root) do:

apt-get install synaptic

[snip]

in konsole, from the root directory, "apt-get update" gives me 14 pages of error codes, then a new prompt. fails to find files, fails to create files, fails to fetch files from addresses. doesn't successfully do anything at all.