I am learning fast.  Got the PPA attached and the daily build installed via kind help and the website.  Then hooked up the USB dongle and it would not work - no drivers, of course, after first plugging it in.  I found somewhere to issue
"DMESG"
in terminal.  I have no idea what that is but it was suggested by a web site to get the drivers installed and it got the correct drivers from somewhere, first try.  Magic abounds!!

Then try to download from the radio and got a message error 13 that I don't have permissions to ttyUSB0. 
Another website said to issue: sudo chmod 0777 /dev/ttyUSB0

That was the last bit to make it work. Got a download. Did not try to re-upload but I suspect it will work.

Thanks to all helpers. Happier now. Chipping away at the Ubuntu mystery. So much to learn.

Oh, special thanks to the packager of Chirp in the PPA. It automatically loaded & installed the three Python pieces and something else. Sweet!!

Mike Morrow/W6XXX (now, back to reading the Ubuntu books that came in)