I've been using Ubuntu for about 3 weeks now, since Windows completely crashed my computer, and other than the fact that Synaptic Package Manager is currently not working (it says that I need to manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem and I haven't gotten around to figuring out how yet)...
This is actually pretty easy. Bring up your shell terminal. Type
sudo dpkg --configure -a
and press return. You will be asked for your password with a prompt in the terminal. Type your password and return. Then dpkg will do its thing. "sudo" tells the system to run the command as an administrator (similar to the dialog box asking for your password when you start synaptic).