Hello mate, I cannot solve your problem for you at the moment because I am a bit busy but I will be glad to give you some tips on googling and how to provide better information to people about your machine. Firstly google is no made to work with full sentences e.g "What can I do to fix Linux Repositories". The Google search engine works of keywords. So say for example I wanted a tutorial on how to fix Ubuntu Repositories I would type something along the lines of "Ubuntu Repositories How To" . Its important to note that the first word in this case "Ubuntu" gets highest priority. Its important to be specific e.g Ubuntu instead of Linux will narrow it down. If you come up with some unexpected results you can use the - command which only shows sites without that parameter. E.g Ubuntu Repositories How To - starbucks. The * command is a wildcard. E.g Wh* would show results for Where, What, Whale, When, and in fact every word possible which started whith Wh. However if you just need one letter you can use the ? character e.g Wh?t. But lets get back to basics. All you really have to know is that you want to always try to narrow your search to get better concentrated outputs. Use Ubuntu instead of generic linux, use repositories instead of server. Also you will want to use the search integrated into ubuntuforums.org to see if someone else has already ask the question and its been solved. The ubuntuforums.org search works the same way google does but instead of searching practically the whole internet it only searches forum posts in ubuntuforums.org. Other linux forums may also be worth scoping out.
Now onto terminal. Terminal is nothing to worry about and in fact ubuntu has a bunch of things in place to stop you breaking your computer which I found really useful as a newbie stumbling about. When you open a terminal up you will be greeted with something like usern...@hostame and you will be able to enter commands after this. A command is just like a program which sends instructions to the computer to do a certain task. The parameters of that program determine the specifics of what the task is going to do. the usern...@hostname is present on every new line and tell you the user what username your working under and on what machine! So lets get down to some basic commands: ls this lists the directory your currently in. By default you will be in your home directory. Using the gui navigate to you home directory. Then in terminal type ls you will see that they are both the same. Now type ls -a and you will be displayed the whole contents of your home directory including hidden files. You will also need to use cd (which stands for change directory) to move through your directories. Now a directory is just a folder. So lets say your in home and you type ls and you get something similar to: Code Document Pictures Videos Desktop Music School and you wanted to go to the Music directory you would type cd Music noting the upper or lowercase as terminal is case sensitive. There are some good online tutorials at: http://showmedo.com/videos/linux which go through the basics of linux plus a lot more in easy bite size tutorials. So now if you want to write a new forum post I would suggest first going into terminal: 1. Type sudo lspci at the command line and then post the output to the forums. However only do this if the issue is relating to hardware, seeing as you have a repository issue and not an internet connectivity issue its a different level of abstraction to say ethernet card drivers. Summary: 1. Try narrow down your searches 2. Check out the site above about some simple video tutorials on learning linux. 3. Type cat /etc/apt/sources.list and post the output so I can get more information to help you. 4. If you want to post better info about your hardware use sudo lspci and get the model of the computer (if its not custom) and post that too. P.S I am not sure if you can update your system through a live cd.. P.P.S Enjoy your day and your time with linux. On Jan 16, 3:17 pm, Peter Williams <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello All, > > I will happily provide extra info as requested!!! My computer is an > extremely new & very fast pc. I think that it has dual core processors, 4 > Gigabytes of RAM and also has a one terabyte HDD!!!! I also use the Telstra > Bigpond ADSL Liberty ISP plan. ( I don't really understand this.. so I hope > that it makes sense to someone! ) > > I'm having some problems with the Synaptic Package Manager. > > Basically all my repository server internet addresses are totally incorrect, > in the Synaptic Package Manager. Because of this I cannot update my system > with the updates. > > I've tried googling for: > > how do I fix linux mint elyssa 5.1 could not download all repository indexes > > but I'm not finding any useful info. ;-( > > I have been told by many people that Google.com is a very powerful search > engine etc -- however, I have to admit that I don't fully understand how to > use it, eg. to search. > > I borrowed a Library book called "Google Search & Rescue for DUMMIES" -- but > I don't know when I'll find time to read it ;-( > > Can someone please tell me or show me how to put in the correct web > addresses (I don't know the correct name) for the Synaptic Package Manager. > > I currently boot-up my computer from a CD-ROM and it boots into Mint Linux > 5.1 Gnome Desktop. Even when my repositories are not being updated I find > the Operating System to be VERY STABLE!!!! I have read in computer magazines > etc that Linux Mint 5 is a very good OS and I agree!!! > > I'm only a Linux Newbie, and although I've been using it for years, I still > get very confused and worried about typing Linux commands into the terminal > shells. This is because I'm a 'newbie' at linux and I don't understand the > commands. I have printed out heaps and heaps of documents on paper.. and I > have so very many pieces of paper that I loose track of them!!!!!! ;-( > > I will appreciate any help. Please be kind to me... as I have a mental > illness, and I need to keep taking my prescription medication... which works > extremely well... as long as I don't forget to take it!. > > Yours Sincerely and With Much Love, > > Praying for someone kind to help me!!! > > PEW aka Pete the Piffle-man poet > (named 'cos of poetry I wrote about a cat I used to own many years ago named > 'Piffle') > > Fond Regards, > Peter Eric (aka 'pew') WILLIAMS > from Hobart, Tasmania, Australia -- phone (03) 6236-9675 > > My free website is:http://pewtas.googlepages.com (or)http://tinyurl.com/yuyejs > > also:http://pewslinuxvault.googlepages.com -- which I started 'cos my > other website is too massive!!! > > (please visit my free website and let me know what you think about it.) > > Natalie Wood - "The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is > when he is a baby." > > -- > ubuntu-au mailing list > [email protected]https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au -- ubuntu-au mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
