new to ubuntu; have a few questions

[Eamonn Sullivan]

On 11/9/06, Dwain Alford <dwain.alford at gmail.com> wrote:
> greetings from upper alabama,

Welcome to the users' list.

First thing I would suggest is to go read at least the introductions
in Ubuntu's excellent online documentation:

https://help.ubuntu.com/6.06/ubuntu/desktopguide/C/index.html

This will give you an overview of such unfamiliar topics as the
apt-get system and sudo. That link is to the HTML documentation, but
there's also a downloadable PDF and other options here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/6.06/

[snip of acpi stuff that's already been answered and hard drive stuff
I know nothing about.]

>
> 4. how do i allow myself full access to the computer to make changes, add
> and delete, move files, copy from one place to another and etc.?  this is a
> tad bit frustrating, but i welcome the linux plunge.

See "sudo" in the online docs. Unlike in Windows, unix/linux users run
as a regular user most of the time and only use "super user" (i.e.
root) privileges when absolutely needed. You prefix any command that
needs to run as administrator with sudo and type in your own password.

Although many old-timers prefer a 'root' account and to use the 'su'
command, most modern unixes use sudo (which means, basically, 'do as
super user').

There's also a graphical equivalent to sudo (called gksudo) which is
what pops up a password dialog when you try to open a graphical
application (such as synaptic) that requires super user privileges.

>
> 5. is there an open source pdf editor akin to acrobat (full version) and
> nitro pdf?  i need more than a viewer.

Just doubleclick on a PDF file or open one from the Web and the
default PDF viewer will open it.

-Eamonn