It would be very hard to have the computer recognize the contents of a conversation, but right now you can have it recognize some specific commands. Maybe it would be easier to have some kind of transmiter rather than a mike in every room , like ST comm-badge or the remote controls used in Home Alone (5 or 6). If would try to do it now , i would set up a home asterisk voip server , add some voice recognition software, and use a cheap wifi voip phone from ebay, maybe an ipaq or ipod or something like that

Well, updates keep coming and 2011 version was on RC or beta, so i think that, albeit a bit slow, they are still on bussiness

As I understand it, you need the root password (root being the usual administrator user). Once you can log in as root you can change any users password. Here is a How To to recover lost root passwords:

http://www.debuntu.org/recover-root-password-single-user-mode-and-grub

Good luck

Another possibility is that the Ubuntu image you downloaded is corrupted. It happened to me once before also with Ubuntu. Could you try downloading it again and burn another disk? Or maybe try another distro?, I like Mandriva, the Mandriva One version is just one CD you can run live or install to hard disk. very flexible.

Good luck

Well Nicolas, you can try two different things:

a).- Use a graphical terminal emulator like gnome-console or konsole (for gnome and kde) this will open windows where you will have access to the command line. You can have as many as you want open at the same time.

b).- Linux still use text only screens. To switch to them press CTRL+ALT+F1. This will send you to a text only console. From there you can switch to several others consoles by pressing ALT+F2, ALT+F3, etc. To return to the graphic environment press CTRL+ALT+F6.

Good luck

You can try several , the first obvious options are the mini-distros like Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux. Another option is to use a regular distro with a light graphical environment. Right now I am using a Pentium III 1 ghz wtih 386Mb RAM with Mandriva Free 2009.1 and the LXDE graphical environment and it is very usable.

I also have an old laptop with a Pentium III 500mhz with 256MB also running mandiva 2009 with Icewm. It will not break any speed record but lets me browse the internet and watch youtube very fine.

Good luck

Well here ir goes some old history:

Back in the early days of main frames and unix, the commands where entered into the computer by typewriter-like keyboards called teletypes and all the feedback was printed in paper, no screens. These appeared later and were called "terminals".

Now, as Linux is somewhat a unix derivative, it has keep most of the terminlogy used back then, so the icon you clic on that gives you a command line is called a terminal. From these you can issue all the commands you like.

If you want to get a full text-only sceen usually linux sets them up by default and if while in graphic mode you press CTRL+ALT+F1 it will send you to a text terminal screen called tty01 (teletype01). If from there you press ALT+F2 you go to tty02 and so on, usually up to ALT+F5. To return to the grapics mode try with ALT+F5, ALT+F6 or sometimes you need CTRL+ALT+F5 or F6.

I hope this helps.

Raul

Well, nowadays most linux distros are very easy to install and use. While the command line is still there and powerfull as ever, you can get along just with the graphical environment.

If you have the time and the will I would recommend to try several and see which one you like. Personally I am a big Mandriva Linux fan, it has a very good hardware detection and you get a large software repository using easyurpmi.

I also tried and like Debian and all of its incarnations, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, etc. They also have (even bigger I think) software repositories with apt-get.

Good luck

Just as a test, could you try booting from a Mandriva Linux One livecd? so far It has been able to detect every wireless card I have tested, (intels and ralink and their different incarnations).

Good luck

Ok, I see, ccd2iso should have worked as shown here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ManageDiscImages

reading I've found some people who got the "file cannot be opened" error or something like that, have you tried running ccd2iso as root?

Good luck