I'm now a re-newbie, sort of. I just took the plunge into Linux, from WinXP, and I've run into a difficulty.
I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on a laptop. Using Synaptic, I was able to install LilyPond 2.10 (I don't remember the release number). I downloaded 2.12.2-1 from the LilyPond website, and it's sitting on my desktop. I uninstalled 2.10, but I can't figure out how to install 2.12 from the desktop file (lilypond-2.12.2-1,linux-x86.sh). I've tried using apt from a terminal window (using sudo), and I've tried Synaptic from the System menu, and I've tried Add/Remove programs.
I've tried searching the mailing list archives, but I'm not finding anything that helps. As far as I can tell, Synaptic is looking for a .deb file, not a .sh file. I tried running "sh lillypond-2.12.2-1,linux-x86.sh" as sudo from the command line, but the shell doesn't like it. I tried bash, as well. The file is a shell script, right? I can't figure out how to run it.
I would appreciate any help or direction-pointing anyone can give.
(As soon as I can get this resolved, I promise to continue with indexing. This has been a trying season.)