[orca-list] Is there really an issue with what I'm doing?

["Mark Gilland" <clgilland07 gmail com>]

OK, I know this is gonna be very subjectional, and very debatable, however, 
speaking not so much from a preference of stand point, but more from a 
realistic one, I'm sorry yall, I could not get Karmic Kola to work very 
well.  I don't exactly know why, but for one, it just would! not! install 
consistently on my laptop, which btw, is a Dell Inspiron E1505.  I don't 
knwo why being I got it to work once, but I broke my OS last night badly. 
NO, I don't mean the Movie Player thing, I mean, i? r'r'r'really! bwoke 
it... Good!  LOL!  I did everything recommended to do with documentation, 
but after what I did, it was too late.  Anyway, I wound up downgrading to 
Intrepid.  Yeah, I know, I know, I could a done Jaunty Jacquelope or however 
it's spelled, sorry, hehehehe, but, I hear even in there, there were some 
issues.  I do plan to get up to speed, e? ventually, but, for now, I need 
something more that works out of the box, that is the least buggy as 
possible.  You all need to understand something.  Yes, I've played before 
with Linux, somewhat extensively, too, but not? really.  The thing is for 
one, I cannot understand ESpeak very well.  It's ok for a real short time, 
but I have a hearing loss, and for whatever reason, I've lost a lot of the 
frequencies needed to understand ESpeak fluently and comfortably.  So, 
Festival was fine, but a little too cacatanated for my liking.  Really 
DecTalk and Voxin are the only two synths I can really comfortably use.  I 
know that really does kind a limit me, but, you do what you have to do.  So, 
here is my question to you all.  For now, being that I am really new to 
linux, I don't yet really speak the language of Unix/linux.  I mean, my feet 
are on the side of the pool, and I know how to put them in, I just haven't 
gotten them wet quite yet, sota speak.  One thing is, I'm scared if I break 
sumpthin, as I did last night, I won't know even where to start to fix it. 
Like IE, I broke my apt last night in the process of other things.  I tried 
installing something that hung.  So I get an msg saying something like

e: cannot open /var/lock/apt/archives or something or another, resource 
temporarily unavailable.

I looked and looked googled and googled, and couldn't find a sollution that 
worked.

So, that is my firwst thing, when you all started, how did you deal with 
really! big screw ups like that when you didn't know where to turn?  Second 
of all, Yeah, eventually I'm gonna have! to just bite the bullet, get up on 
the latest build of Ubuntu, or whatever distro I decide on, and, basically, 
well? just? go.  But, for the time? being! at least, do you all see any 
confcern for using Intrepid?  The only thing i can think of is out-dated 
pkgs, plus the apt repositories might be out of date, etc. and I don't 
really know how to fix 'em.  Well, I do, but I mean, I don't know all the 
addresses and stuff to put in the sources.list file.  Speaking a which, why 
won't g edit read files when I go to terminal and

sudo gedit filename?

Yes, I did create the .orbitrc file.  That? I, did do.

Yes, I've logged out sense, also have restarted sense.

I'm being forced, thus, to use Nano, which seems to work.

I guess out dated pkgs is my main only concern.  Plus, out dated Orca.  I 
know it can be updated, but I don't feel I'm at the comfort level yet to 
even begin! to take on that task.

I dono, what do you all think.  If what I'm doing is not the best way to 
start out, what do you all advise may be a better avenue to take?