2nd problem solved

[shankle]

The 1st problem solved was about Ubuntu mate on Wiffies computer.
She is still happy which keeps me out of trouble

I for some unknown reason like to play Solitaire on the computer.
I have an old external hd in a usb case and I thought I would put
Ubuntu mate on it and be able to play Solitaire there. WRONG!!!!
It must be my lack of knowledge of Ubuntu but I could never get
it to work. So I put PcLinuxos of the external drive and voila, it
already had the Kpatience games which I am addicted to.
The only draw back to this is I have to unplug both Windows SSDs
before doing this.
One can't have everything :(

[Vortex]

Hi shankle,

Here are some links for you :

https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/aisleriot

https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/kpat

[shankle]

Thank you Vortex for responding.

[cman]

I always use the "software manager" to find programs for Linux.  You can usually do a keyword search and find programs that you want ( search for  "Solitaire" or card games or whatever - I like to play computer Chess , so I know where you're coming from  )

[mineiro]

Nice know this cman, I'm using xboard, do you have a suggestion of another good chess game on linux? I also see day by day sites like chessgames.com and chess.com, trying to solve their puzzles.

On linux you have many database around the world, so to install or update some program you should first feed internal server list, probably with the near location behind you. All on linux can be done by terminal mode. Most distros today are debian packaged, so you can use 'apt-get' command to install programs, list whats installed, new updates, ... . Of course, you have some frames (gui) to deal with this too. I'm using 'muon' on kde.

edited-
You can also check 'apt' or 'dpkg' command too.

[BlueMR2]

Make sure all your other software is up to date before adding something new with software manager! 

About a month ago I used software manager to add a new piece of software to one of my GNU/Linux boxen.  It sucked in some (updated) required libraries with it.  Unfortunately, those updates weren't entirely compatible with my window manager nor my networking stack.  It was an hour of agony at the command line to get a working network connection again (had to give up on wifi as hopeless and then was able to get Ethernet working).  Then I could run a full system update from the CLI.  Reboot after that and all was well again!  Still, all could have been avoided if I'd done the system update THEN installed the new piece of software!

[cman]

Yeah , they say always to update before adding new software on Linux. From what I read the Linux user space is a patchwork of different shared libraries and applications that all work together to form the user interface. I noticed when you install something there are usually a bunch of dependencies that a program uses to function so that changing some of those could "break" a bunch of other programs. I usually update Linux every time I use it ( it doesn't take much effort or time to do this anyway ).  Unfortunately , I installed 32-bit Fedora on my machines so I will probably have to reinstall 64-bit versions on everything soon ( I was worried about software availability , etc. so I initially chose the 32-bit versions 3-4 years ago when I started with Linux ).