Seems like I was already at the right place. The commands are simply different than what ubuntu based distros used me to. Ill try fix it up for myself and then if I suceed ill post how i did it.
I did get it running just last night, although I am using Linux Mint, which is an Ubuntu derivative. Suggestions:
1) Start from the Installing wiki at
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Installing_%28OpenXcom%29 Go to the Installing Dependencies paragraph and enter the code below it.
2) Per that document, and assuming you haven't defined any environment variables, your User folder and your Data folder will be the same, i.e. /home/<username>/.local/share/openxcom (That's fine, I only mention it because you will need to know where it is.) Per the document, first copy your game files to that directory from wherever you have them. Only the ones specified. Then you need the Latest Patch, which you unzip and overwrite the files you just copied.
3) Download the source code from
https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom.git Unzip it to whatever directory you want. I used /home/<username>/.local/share/openxcom/source, but you choose what you want.
4) Next see Compiling with CMAKE
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Compiling_with_CMake_%28OpenXcom%29 Open a terminal. From here, I can't be much help. My first time using cmake was last night. Follow the "End-to-end" example as best you can.
5) Open a terminal window. Make a "bin" directory, if you don't already have one. Change to the bin directory. Create a script to run the game. Here's the code for the above:
mkdir bin
cd bin
vi openxcom.bash
i (for insert mode)
#!/bin/bash
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
$HOME/bin/OpenXcom/bin/openxcom -data $HOME/bin/OpenXcom/share/openxcom/UFO
ESC key : wq! (To exit insert mode, save your changes, and exit the editor.)
6) From the terminal, type chmod 755 openxcom.bash
7) That's it. Any time you want to play, you open a terminal window and type openxcom.bash
OK, this is a work very much in progress, since I only got it working last night. But there is no need for sudo or anything else that isn't standard to all version of Linux I have used. Feel free to le tme know if you need more help.