Brand new to Ubuntu and have no idea how to edit documents, what 'sudo' means, and where the windows icon went? Having trouble following the instructions, can't save edits to your files, or don't know how to edit files at all?

Well, you've got a little reading to do. The Ubuntu Docs are excellent. Be sure to read these over when you have a chance.

Meanwhile here are a few very quick tips to help get you started with the instructions on this page. For some of the software installation instructions, we'll be assuming you're running the Server edition, and therefore have no nice graphic interface to work with. So, to install our software, we'll be working from the command line, rather than via a nice graphic based package manager (see those Ubuntu docs for going that route!)

• General Consideration: Your user probably doesn't have permission to install stuff, or edit system files:
  • Therefore, we prepend 'sudo' to many of our commands, which basically means 'run the following as the root user'. Be extra careful when working with lines that start with 'sudo' - you don't want to make a mistake.
  • If, for example, you need to edit a file (like /etc/apt/sources.list), and you just try to edit it without running your favorite editor as a user with permission to write to that file, you'll become frustrated. In this case, you could try:

     #if you have the desktop edition
     sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
     #if you have the server edition
     sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
     # if you know how to use vim, you probably don't need to be reading this page
     sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list