Editor can't edit

[alex]

UBUNTU installed very easily and looks like it has a lot of potential 
but I'm wondering ,  is there a super-duper user
hidden somewhere?    Super user can't even  make an editor, edit.    If 
sudo can't do it,  then who can, sdudo, perhaps.?

I wanted to make a change in grub so that Windows XP would be the 
default  boot .  I have some 5 -6 year old great-grand children who like 
to use my computer when they visit and wanted to set in a 2 second  
autoboot delay in grub with Windows XP as the default   When  I try to 
edit  menu.lst, under sudo, a notice comes up saying that the editor is 
read only.  That's why the question......is there a super-duper user 
hiding somewhere who can make the editor  edit?

I managed to make the grub changes by running  KNOPPIX  and using  its  
editor to make the  changes in UBUNTU's grub/menu.lst  and UBUNTU  now  
boots the way I wanted  it.......Wonderful!!!   I can now boot  two MS 
Windows,  four Linux 's but it has to be within the 2 seconds to make 
the selection.

Is this inability to run the editor to edit normal in UBUNTU (somebody's 
perverse sense of humor, perhaps) .   Could it be because of doing 
something wrong during installation?      What can I do  to correct the 
problem,?


alex, the OF