new to ubuntu; have a few questions

[Mario Vukelic]

On Thu, 2006-11-09 at 00:28 -0600, Dwain Alford wrote:
> i entered what you have written and got a syntax error.  could you be
> more specific what the command i need to use is? 

On this (and most other) linux mailing lists, <command> is a placeholder
for whatever command you want to run. 

So, Josh wanted you to open a terminal, and enter "sudo" followed by
whatever command or application name you want to run. 
I would however modify Josh's advice a bit and would recommend the
following:

If you want to run a single graphic-mode application with administrator
rights, press Alt+F2, which will bring up a dialog to start
applications, similar to Start -> Run in Windows.
In this dialog, enter "gksudo <command>", that is, gksudo followed by
the name of the application. This will bring up a password dialog where
you enter your password. Then the requested application will start.

To run a file manager window with admin rights: gksudo nautilus
To run a text editor with admin rights: gksudo gedit

You can find out the application/command names for the applications in
your Applications menu by going to the menu editor in System ->
Preferences -> Menu Layout.

If you want to run text-mode commands, you will need to open a terminal
(Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal). This might seem intimidating
at first. However, the Unix/Linux command line interface is very very
powerful (not comparable to the "MS DOS prompt" in Windows) and for many
tasks it is worth learning to use it. If you are interested, start here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CommandlineHowto?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AdvancedCommandlineHowto?