problems downloading

[ferret]

I am using ubuntu 11.10, thats all I know. I think its great and would like to keep on using it, but I don't seem to be able to download things from the software center every time I try I get the same error message come up which is "failed to download package files"
check your internet connection, as far as I know there's nothing wrong with my internet it all seems to be running as it should.
I did ask on the ubuntu forum thing but they're all a bit too technical and scary for me, please keep this in mind when trying to answer my question  when it comes to computers I'm a bit dull

[pcolbeck]

Try downloading from the command line instead and see if you get a more enlightening error:

sudo apt-get install "package name"

[ferret]

I did what you suggested and came up with this

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package computer
E: Unable to locate package janitor

The thing I was trying to download is computer janitor, I'll try downloading something else, thanks for the help

just tried to download a game and similar thing can't find it etc etc.

[fuaran]

You need to specify the correct package name. For Computer Janitor, this is probably "computer-janitor" or "computer-janitor-gtk" for the GUI version.
So run something like this, and see if it works:

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install computer-janitor-gtk
(though I'm not sure if installing Computer Janitor is a good idea, quite a few of the reviews on the Software Centre say it messed up their system)

[ferret]

well I went on the ubuntu answer pages and did some pretty techy stuff and it is now sorted I dont know what I did, but things can now be downloaded again and typically the first thing I've downloaded to make sure it was working has shrunk my bloody screen, oh well ?

right the problem is if I set the display to 1360 x 768 it fills the screen but everything is blurry, if it's set to its correct resolution of 1024 x 768 I have two black bars down the edge of the display what have I done now ??