Downloading problems

Search for zip in the Software Centre and you should see zip and 7zip near the top of the list. With both of these installed, you should be able to open just about any zipped files with Ubuntu's Archive Manager.

Hi :)

This link might help with wider issues
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows

Also every install of Ubuntu needs someone to go through this guide to sort all the multimedia issues in 1 easy session
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

Ubuntu & Windows are both Operating Systems. Some programs(such as OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin) are written to run on both Operating Systems but because both operating systems are completely different those programs have a Windows version which has significantly different code from their Linux versions.

Usually those programs started off being for Linux only but because Linux programs are written as OpenSource anyone can look inside the code and change it enough to work on a different Operating System, usually a few other gnu&linux ones first. Often some people will then "port it" across to Mac, which is also unix-based so again the code can sometimes only need a little changing (relatively). Since Windows dominates the desktop market still and might do for another couple of years people then try to port the code to Windows but this is not an easy task because Windows is not written to be as secure as Linux so a lot of other factors have to be considered. Also in Windows it has not usually been possible to really run a program in normal user mode. Programs apparently keep having to access SuperUser/Root mode which is difficult for a linux programmer to do because of the inherent risks and "bad code" involved.

Windows tries to add security afterwards partly by adding layers of secrecy so that no-one can look at all of the code. This makes it very difficult to find out if the code is likely to break or has flaws or even if it has become infected by something harmful. This is one reason why ClosedSource (usually called proprietary) has more virus infestations than OpenSource programs. It also makes it difficult to try to "port it" to another platform such as Mac or Linux.

Another reason linux gets less than its fair percentage of malware outbreaks is because almost everyone that produces programs & other packages for a particular version of linux takes pride in getting their package accepted into one of the vast stores (="repositories") of software available for that version of linux.

So, when people want their machine to be able to do something new they can just look through these repositories instead of just hunting around the internet looking at unfamiliar websites for something that may (or even probably) does have a stack of "features" which the user can never find out about.

Linux has "Packages Managers" to do all the searching, installing and updating for you.

If you really can't find a native Linux app to do the job and really feel the need to install a Windows program in Linux then try installing Wine. I would do that from Synaptic Package Manager

System - Administration - Synaptic

and use either search tool to help find and install "wine"
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi ?

Sorry about my last message! Hopefully something helped but i got really far toooo verbose! Sorry

Many regards from
Tom :)