Thomas Moore's questions

I would like to be able to open the software "Julia" by simply typing julia in a terminal at any location (like I can do for, say, firefox). Currently, I have to type

cd ~/julia
./julia

According to the documentation I must:

Add a soft link to the julia executable in the julia directory to /usr/local/bin (or any suitable directory already in your path).

I don't fully understand softlinks, but I can't figure out why this doesn't work:

ln -s ~/julia /usr/local/bin

Why won't this allow me to access the contents of the ~/julia file (including the julia executable) directly?

We've got an old computer at home which has really been left unused for a few years. It was the 'family computer' for a few years, and it is absolutely clogged down with programs, and runs so slowly it is almost useless - I'm sure you know the type. I think we got it new in 2004, and from memory, the specs are:

512 mb RAM

40 GB harddrive

2.0 GHz processor

I'll have to double check about the graphics card, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 128 MB

Anyway, a friend recommended Ubuntu to give this old computer a new lease on life, but I just wanted to ask here if there's anything I ought to know before going ahead with this. In particular, should I use an older version of Ubuntu, or possibly XUbuntu (which I've seen people talk about here), as for me quick response is far more important than flashy icons that may lag when you click them.

I'd rather not spend any more money on hardware. As I say, this computer is effectively unused today, and if we could just restore it for lag-less web browsing and word processing I think we'd call this a success.

Thanks for your help!