Installation of trading-shim

can you tell us a little more about what you tried and what went wrong? In perusing their INSTALL file I see:

"Prerequisites: You need, at a minimum, a C++ compiler; a Java; a running Trader Workstation, available by download from http://www.interactive.brokers.com/ ; MySQL; and Ruby."

Do you have all these installed?

C++ compiler (gcc) is available by installing the build-essential package. "a Java" probably means a JVM. There are two available for Ubuntu as I recall. I recommend firing up Synaptic and searching on "Java" to see what's available and decide which you want. You can also get MySQL and Ruby through Synaptic AFAIK. The Trader Workstation appears to be available as a Java application from the referenced link (which appears to be broken- should be http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/control/systemstandalone.php?os=unix&ib_entity=llc ).

I'm going to assume you have never compiled software before. In general, we'll use gcc to compile things from C or C++ or Pascal or the many languages gcc supports. The usual procedure is something like:

1) Download source code (usually a tarball or other archive)

2) Unpack archive into the location of your choice

3) Read README and other documentation to determine dependencies, expected paths to libraries, etc.

4) cd to directory containing Makefile

5) ./configure or make configure

6) make

7) make install

If the dependencies are properly installed, the code and supporting scripts are properly written and invoked, and the stars are properly aligned, you should now have a functioning binary. ;^)