How do you install?

Welcome to the Ubuntu community!

First, can you tell me:

   * How fast is your CPU?
   * How much RAM do you have installed?
   * What operating system are you using now?
   * Do you want to keep that operating system intact?

With that information, I can provide more detailed instructions for you.

Where do I find out how fast my CPU is?

I have 3GB ram installed and I'm using Ubuntu Jaunty and I want to keep my system in tact

With 3GB RAM installed, it doesn't really matter what your CPU speed is -- it's unlikely that it would be slow enough to matter for any machine that can take that much.

What is your currently-installed operating system? You said Ubuntu Jaunty, but I assume that's what you want to install. I will assume you are using Windows now and want to add Ubuntu Jaunty.

The easiest thing for you to do as a new user is to:

 1) download a copy of the jaunty LiveCD ISO (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download)
 2) check the md5 sum of the ISO to make sure the download is good, using a program such as md5summer (http://www.md5summer.org/)
 3) burn the ISO to a CD using a program such as Infrarecorder (http://infrarecorder.org/)
 4) insert the newly-burned CD into your computer while you are logged into Windows
 5) perform a WUBI install of Ubuntu, which completely preserves your Windows system

Actually, based on what I see at http://wubi-installer.org/ it may not be necessary to burn the CD. See

   http://wubi-installer.org/faq.php

for more details. You may want to just try that.

I actually do have Ubuntu Jaunty installed, but what I want to find out is how to install the gnome wallchanger from the download available from here https://launchpad.net/gnome-wallchanger/+download . I'm able to follow fairly detailed instructions, but I want to learn how to install an application from the source code.

Thanks, this worked!

Thanks FactTech, that solved my question.

i'm using Jaunty, and with the stable branch package i download, ./configure doesn't work. there isn't anything to configure as far as i can tell..

AUTHORS gnome-wallchanger-config random-wallpaper-and-log
build gnome-wallchanger-config.py random-wallpaper.py
ChangeLog lib setup.py
COPYING MANIFEST.in wallchanger.desktop
doc po wallchanger.png
glade random-wallpaper wallchanger.svg

the trunk branch doesn't work either.

i run ./setup install and it runs what looks to be an install script

sudo ./setup.py install
running install
running build
running build_scripts
creating build
creating build/scripts-2.6
copying random-wallpaper -> build/scripts-2.6
copying gnome-wallchanger-config -> build/scripts-2.6
running install_scripts
copying build/scripts-2.6/random-wallpaper -> /usr/local/bin
copying build/scripts-2.6/gnome-wallchanger-config -> /usr/local/bin
changing mode of /usr/local/bin/random-wallpaper to 755
changing mode of /usr/local/bin/gnome-wallchanger-config to 755
running install_data
copying glade/wallchanger.glade -> /usr/local/share/wallpaper-changer/glade/
copying random-wallpaper.py -> /usr/local/share/wallpaper-changer/
copying setup.py -> /usr/local/share/wallpaper-changer/
copying gnome-wallchanger-config.py -> /usr/local/share/wallpaper-changer/
copying lib/config.py -> /usr/local/share/wallpaper-changer/
copying lib/lister.py -> /usr/local/share/wallpaper-changer/
copying wallchanger.png -> /usr/local/share/wallpaper-changer/
copying wallchanger.desktop -> /usr/share/applications/
copying wallchanger.png -> /usr/share/pixmaps/
copying doc/gnome-wallchanger-config.1 -> /usr/local/share/man/man1
copying doc/random-wallpaper.1 -> /usr/local/share/man/man1
running install_egg_info
Writing /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/gnome_wallchanger-2.7.egg-info

 however the menu link points to /usr/bin and not /usr/local/bin and after changing it the program fails to launch after trying for 10 seconds.

i'm using Karmic ubuntu 9.10 and i have the same problem as uschxc

i hope theres a way to solve this thanks

ubunti 12.04... same as uschxc and David Zurita