Problems Converting and Playing Songs in Banshee

Have you installed support for mp3 or whatever codec is needed?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

Jim,

That took care of the codec problem, and now all songs play...

But do you have any idea as to the answer to my second question:

When I download last.fm, it puts it into my archive manager, but I have no idea of what to do with it next.

Sorry, no. I don't use last.fm. However, if you are downloading something to install you won't have much luck. Linux doesn't work that way. Open up the Synaptic package manager (system-admin) and see if what you want is there. If so, click and apply. If you have to install something manually, you have to make sure you download the source code and then follow the steps to compile. This usually requires you to add the development tools

sudo apt-get install build-essential

and then extract the download, navigate to the folder and compile. The usual steps are

./configure
make
sudo make install

But that does depend somewhat on what you downloaded. I've tried some that failed because the config file was poorly done. You best bet is to use Synaptic or find ubuntu (i.e. debian) specific packages. These will end in .deb (kind of like .exe). It's best to find ones specifically packaged for ubuntu though as there are sometimes minor differences.

Great...

I was able to download the program through Add/Remove Programs...

--Brian