box(w1,ACS VLINE; ACS HLINE); finestra.c:11:28: error: macro "box" requires 3 arguments, but only 2 given 11 | box(w1,ACS VLINE; ACS HLINE); This has nothing to with arch or ncurses. It is a plain and simple syntax error. c functions have arguments separated by commas, not semicolons. Also it seem like you have copy pasted code from somewhere, and it made all the underscores spaces. You need to fix that. libncurses is part of the ncurses package so you need not worry about that. I suggest you start finding a book on c and learn the syntax before you progress any further with you assignment. EDIT: Also when you are still new to programming and the goal is learning, copy pasting code is never a good idea. It doesn't save any time and only create issues if you don't understand every line and character in the code. On top of that you learn less, which is the worst part of it all. Instead critically review every line in the piece of code that you would have copy-pastaed and enter each manually. Explain each line to yourself as if you where another student. This may seem tedious, but it helps tremendously in the long run, it creates muscle memory and it helps you get familiars with the syntax. If there is a single character that you don't understand you need to look it up otherwise it comes back to bite you when you least expect it and you need to hand-in in 40 min. More on reddit.com

libncurses5 was removed in 24.04 try this: wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/n/ncurses/libtinfo5_6.4-2_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i libtinfo5_6.4-2_amd64.deb && rm -f libtinfo5_6.4-2_amd64.deb wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/n/ncurses/libncurses5_6.4-2_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i libncurses5_6.4-2_amd64.deb && rm -f libncurses5_6.4-2_amd64.deb sudo apt install lib32ncurses5-dev libncurses5 libncurses5-dev -y More on reddit.com