I am too dumb but determined to use Ubuntu that I paid a professional to install it for me (dualboot 11.10 with Win7). When I came home I got a lot of things from the software center. Skype did not have a download button so I googled it and Ubuntu help told me to do this:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner"

and then this:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install skype

The terminal told me "that this is potentially harmful..." but I thought it was Ubuntu language meaning "are you sure?"

Now the computer is mute.

Items cannot be installed or removed until the package catalog is repaired, so I want to repair it but the package operation fails.

"sudo aptitude -f install" -> command not found

Synaptic package manager tells me that I have two broken packages, libc6 and libc6-dev

so I do this:

 sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade 

which tells me to do this:

 sudo apt-get -f install 

that ends up like this:

Can't exec "locale": No such file or directory at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Encoding.pm line 16.

Use of uninitialized value $Debconf::Encoding::charmap in scalar chomp at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Encoding.pm line 17.

Preconfiguring packages ...

dpkg: warning: 'ldconfig' not found in PATH or not executable.

dpkg: error: 1 expected program not found in PATH or not executable.

Note: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /sbin.

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

When fixing broken packages in synaptic package manager I get this:

Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: warning: 'ldconfig' not found in PATH or not executable.
dpkg: error: 1 expected program not found in PATH or not executable.
Note: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /sbin.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
dpkg: warning: 'ldconfig' not found in PATH or not executable.
dpkg: error: 1 expected program not found in PATH or not executable.
Note: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /sbin.

I want to become a linux geek but it is harder than I thought. Please help!