HOWTO: Install GNU C compiler and GNU C++ compiler on Ubuntu

To install the gcc and g++ compilers, you will need the build-essential package.
Build-essential contains a list of packages which are essential for building Ubuntu packages including gcc compiler, make and other required tools.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

Install the manpages for c and c++ development:

$ sudo apt-get install manpages-dev

Check the version of gcc and make:

$ gcc -v
...
gcc version 4.8.2 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)

$ make -v
GNU Make 3.81
...

Now you should be able to compile software using C / C++ compilers.