I am trying to get PHP Express extension added in unbuntu but I cant seem to make it work. When I extracted the .tar download there wasn't a specific folder for ubuntu. The instructions list changing the php.ini file to load the extensions file. Once I started to edit the php.ini file all the other extensions for php stopped working. I did some searching and found that unbuntu handles their extensions differently but I can't seem to figure out what I need to do to get it to work.

I don't think that ubuntu comes with any special way of handling php.ini or it would dissatisfy a lot of maintainers/administrators.
Just follow instructions and if you get a problem, contact support and provide details.