Newbie Questions - sorry

Hi - I have an A110 aspire one in white, running the standard install from Acer (linpus...?) (actually my daughter's but if she cant get something to work she asks if I can buy something that does what she wants......!)

The screen is split in to 4 quarters for the different applications and in the bottom right it takes you to settings.

My daughter wants to be able to use facebook chat on the machine but cant access from the bundled Messenger application (unless anyone can tell me how to) and I have search and found that an application called Pidgin will allow this. I have downloaded Pidgin but cannot install it. When trying to run it it tries to open in Open Office, even if I right click it, there does not appear to be a run command.

So - can anyone help me either:

1 - Configure the bundled Messenger to access Facebook Chat
2 - Step by step, tell me how to install applications using this OS.

I am technically literate but totally new to this OS, so all help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

 

I know I won't help you if you want to keep Linpus.
But I installed Ubuntu 10.10, it's a great OS and easy to use with a lot of support from its community.