'universe' component?

[Lynn David Newton]

Greetings,

Well, I downloaded Ubuntu 7.04 and installed it in a
virtual machine on my Macbook Pro today. This is my
first view ever of Ubuntu. And I must say -- sweet! I
may be switching from SuSE on my primary machine, but
not until I get a good look at the latest of that, too,
in a virtual machine.

I went to install a package with apt-get, and it tells
me:

Make sure you have the 'universe' component enabled

Can someone tell me what that means before I jump into
slime up to my neck?

A couple of weeks ago someone suggested I try Kubuntu
because it's based in KDE. I'm not heavily partial to
either KDE or Gnome. I used Gnome for years until one
day I installed some version of Linux and it wouldn't
work for me, whereupon I gave up in exasperation and
installed KDE, and have been using it ever since.

Things change. Neither the latest KDE nor Gnome look
familiar to me from what I've used before, and as far
as I'm concerned a DTM is just a DTM. All I really need
on a Linux system is (X)Emacs, terminal windows, and
Firefox, and I can do 90% of what I do on a computer. 
The rest is just glitz. But I really like the simplicy
of the Ubuntu interface.

-- 
Lynn David Newton
Phoenix, AZ