This page describes how to compile Oricutron for Ubuntu (instructions correct for Ubuntu 12.04)
sudo apt-get install libsdl-dev libgtk-3-dev
Make sure you have the GNU C++ compiler support installed:
sudo apt-get install g++
Either download and extract a source package from the download page, or check out the current subversion trunk.
makeHopefully, an Oricutron executable should come out the other end.