Let me know if you want a hand with the How-To. I'm about to compile the latest ChucK on my new netbook (!) which run Ubuntu.
Most important will be the exact list of what to get from synaptic. Stuff like Gcc, Bison, libsndfile, some "-dev" files, etc.
From there on it's just "make linux-alsa" and "sudo make install".
The thing is that if I'd have to do it from memory I'd likely forget a file or two. Once you've done it a few times you know from the errors you get what file you missed but for people new to the process that would be a minor setback. If you could keep a list of notes of everything you need to apt-get starting from a plain Ubuntu install then that'd already be most of the tutorial right there :-). Congratulations on your new computer. Kas.