[Discuss] New Kubuntu Install

[Murray Strome]

I decided to switch from Mandriva to Kubuntu on my wife's computer over 
the past couple of days. After loading it a couple of times, and having 
a really difficult time trying to figure out where Thunderbird had 
stored her address book and E-mails, I finally have most things going 
OK. However, I have a couple of problems.

1. I wanted to install Adobe Acroreader. I tried three different ways:

    a) using the installer for LINUX (it had tons of errors, so I 
aborted that as I couldn't find all the things it was complaining about).
    b) I tried using the .rpm file with alien -- that also encountered 
lots of problems
    c) I downloaded the .deb package and tried to use dpkg to install it 
as follows:

sudo dpkg -i AdobeReader_enu-8.1.1-1.i386.deb

I got the following error:

dpkg: error processing AdobeReader_enu-8.1.1-1.i386.deb (--install):
package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
Errors were encountered while processing:
AdobeReader_enu-8.1.1-1.i386.deb

There may be a version on some repository I don't know about.  I have 
Multiverse enabled, but cannot find it anywhere except on the Adobe 
site. My own computer has Kubuntu, but it is an older, 32 bit system. I 
don't remember how I installed it on that computer. I know there are 
alternative PDF viewers which DO work (and I use them when I must), but 
I prefer Acroread.

I haven't tried to install Flash or Shockwave yet, and I have not 
successfully loaded anything that can reliably play embedded MIDI files 
(such as those on certain websites which open with QuickTime in 
Windows), .wmv files (Totem and MPlayer both fail to open them), and 
most Video DVDs don't seem to work).

In the start menu, most of the packages that were loaded during the 
installation have entries like:

            _:Entries in K-menu: Kate app name, Advanced text editor...

Packages that I have installed later using Adept or Synaptic have a 
normal appearance. It is not really a big deal, but it is annoying and I 
would like to figure out how to fix these entries (if possible). The 
links actually work OK. I have tried editing them, without success.

I have been able to recover all of my wife's documents, etc. and I 
really like GIMP 2.4 and OpenOffice 2.3 that were included.

Any suggestions to fix these problems would be most welcome.