To open the DOS-like terminal, press Ctrl+Alt+T all together on your keyboard to open the terminal.
From the terminal prompt to find out what your distribution is, type in the following:
cat /etc/*release
it will produce text looking like this:
terrance@terrance-ubuntu:~$ cat /etc/*release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="14.04.3 LTS, Trusty Tahr"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS"
VERSION_ID="14.04"
HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
To find out if it is 32bit or 64bit, type in:
getconf LONG_BIT
Example:
terrance@terrance-ubuntu:~$ getconf LONG_BIT
64
Then to install Skype, type in the following:
sudo apt-get install skype
When sudo
is used in front of the command, it is running at an elevated permission level, so it will ask for your password to continue to install the application.
To add a Desktop
icon of skype
, type in the following to copy one to your desktop, then make it executable.
cp /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop ~/Desktop/
chmod +x ~/Desktop/skype.desktop
Hope this helps!