Help!

[geeles at magma.ca]

I am a newcomer to Ubuntu, I have installed 5.10 and need to solve some
problems before I can use it on a regular basis. Any help on the following would
be much appreciated.

1. I have installed the Firestarter firewall and tried what seem to be all possible
settings but it blocks my accessing the internet through Firefox. The only way I can
browse is to disable Firestarter, I use an eth0 interface and this has worked 
with a firewall on another Linux distribution.

2. Trying to install the Aegis anti-virus program produces a message that it cannot
be installed on my system, the same message also appears when I try to install
the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail program. 

3. There are several programs I am interested in, including Thunderbird, that are 
available as .tar.gz downloads, how can I install these and integrate them
into the desktop?

Any assistance much appreciated, thanks, George