I came back to this this morning after not having any time yesterday. I have uninstalled everything and started again and am at the last step and it says

cannot create /home/user/.profile: permission denied.

I hardly understand anything that I am doing but I am enjoying having a go and appreciate everyone taking the time to help people out.

I have never used linux before or had any experience of it, so this is all really new to me.

But I thnk the boards are great and have found out so much about my n900 that there is no way I would have found anywhere else.

Cheers guys