I am a noob too and I got Swift to compile on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS using the
following command from the swift/utils directory:
./build-script --preset=buildbot_linux_1604 install_destdir=/tmp/install
installable_package=/tmp/swift.tar.gz
And then running swift with:
/tmp/install/bin/swift my_code.swift
Hope this helps!
-Mohit