I just upgraded to Ubuntu Mate. What text do I type in the terminal to download the latest version of BOINC? Tried going to the homepage download screen, but I keep getting an error stating that the file can't be opened.

---

Please keep in mind that I am not computer literate. Please make all answers the best layman's terms you have.

What the hell, people? What good IS this board if I ask for help and everybody ignores me?

At last count, nearly 100 people have viewed this question, and done nothing further. Is this The Observer Effect? Do all these 100 people just assume somebody else is going to help me?

---

Please keep in mind that I am not computer literate. Please make all answers the best layman's terms you have.

I looked but have no knowledge of Ubuntu Mate, so what good will it do to then jump in? I'll wait for a general Linux guru to pass by and those are spread thin around here.
What you could do instead though is come over to the BOINC forums and ask there. Juha is doing the rounds there.

---

By the way, I doubt it changed much on how to install BOINC. For that you can check http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC_on_Ubuntu
After that all you have to do is add Seti as a project. If you can start BOINC Manager (the GUI) you can do it through there, but otherwise do it via command line commands:

boinc --attach_project https://setiathome.berkeley.edu 1234567890ABCDEF1234567890ABCDEF

The number there is your account key, you can find that one in Your Account, under View Account keys.

With a running BOINC you can also use the BOINCCMD tool to add projects.

boinccmd --project_attach URL account_key

---

Thank you for helping.

I put this line into the terminal:

sudo aptitude install boinc-client boinc-manager

but the response was "sudo: aptitude: command not found"

---

Please keep in mind that I am not computer literate. Please make all answers the best layman's terms you have.

Searching on that error, it appears aptitude doesn't come pre-installed on Ubuntu. You could install it using:

sudo apt-get install aptitude

But then similarly you could just use apt-get to install BOINC:

sudo apt-get install boinc-client boinc-manager

---

Success! Everything's up and running. Thanks for your help.

Do you know how to download and run Virtualbox?

---

Please keep in mind that I am not computer literate. Please make all answers the best layman's terms you have.

Depends on why you think you need it. It's not needed for this project.

But else go to https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads and download the correct version for your Ubuntu (Ubuntu 16.04 ("Xenial")) for the correct bit-depth of your Ubuntu (x86 or x64). It comes with an installer. Then download and install the extension pack from http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/5.0.20/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-5.0.20-106931.vbox-extpack

---

I want to connect to the LHC and ATLAS projects. Also, I'm a writer and want to use my preferred word processor, WordPerfect.

I've downloaded it. Do you know how to configure it?

---

Please keep in mind that I am not computer literate. Please make all answers the best layman's terms you have.

No, no knowledge of that. Most of the other pointers I gave were also from searches on how to do this.
If the site you downloaded it from doesn't tell you how, best ask on a general help forum.

---