Problem with displaying joomla correctly on XAMPP in Linux

i have used Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.
i had used the default full installation of XAMPP for Linux 1.7.3a.

i had coded PHP applications for quite awhile and everything worked great....... but when i installed Joomla - a leading Content Management System on PHP - on my localhost, i got some gibberish nonsense like this...... full of this error and that error

i searched the net for answers but found no source helpful...... that's why putting the solution to this problem up on my blog.