I recntly had tried to install a couple programs (google talk mainly I believe) and ran into some problems due to instructions I had recieved not working- now I seem to have problems with updates; I will provide the error message:

Reading package lists... Done
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable/main amd64 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_ma in_binary-amd64_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable/main amd64 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_ma in_binary-amd64_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable/main amd64 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_ma in_binary-amd64_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable/main i386 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_ma in_binary-i386_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable/main i386 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_ma in_binary-i386_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable/main i386 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_ma in_binary-i386_Packages)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

I did run an update but the same message keeps appearing.... now I am having problems with upgrades....

Thank you in advance for your help

(by the way I am using Xubuntu 14.04- I have used linux in the past but am very rusty due to a broken computer, a lot of time taking care of my daughter etc. I am somewhat embarrassed b/c 4 months ago I feel like I could have fixed this myself and hope to go into IT and eventually security- but obviously I am at the very beginning of that path and am just starting to study for the compTIA A+ (although am going through the command line crash course and learn linux the hard way first)

Open the sources.list with your favorite editor and remove offending lines.

The clue might be in "Duplicate sources.list". Check /etc/apt/sources.list and all files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ for duplicate entries.

I found the files to be in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and indeed there are multiple entries (different google stuff). I went and opened it with nano and a blank screen comes up.

Thank you for your help and sorry to sound like an idiot- there were some months where my computer was broken and I got rusty (I only started using linux last October as well (first Ubuntu, then debian, then manjaro (which broke all the time) and now Xubuntu). Definitely finishing the command line crash course and learn linux the hard way before moving onto trying to study compTIA A+)

I don't understand your post completely. You're saying that the files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ contain "different google stuff", yet if you open these files with nano they are empty? It looks to me like that you're trying to open the directory with nano and not the containing files. Please post the output of the following commands here.

Please use the code tags for the output.

ls -la /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
total 36
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 8 20:58 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Oct 10 09:47 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 176 Oct 8 20:58 google-chrome.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 176 Oct 8 20:58 google-chrome.list.save
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 59 Oct 8 20:58 google.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 59 Oct 8 20:58 google.list.save
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 298 Oct 8 20:58 google-talkplugin.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 298 Oct 8 20:58 google-talkplugin.list.save
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 154 Oct 8 20:58 webupd8team-y-ppa-manager-trusty.list

then

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*
### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ###
# You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ###
# You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ###
# You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ###
# You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team...manager/ubuntu trusty main
# deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team...manager/ubuntu trusty main

Sorry about that, I meant when I looked at it in the file manager I saw multiple google talk plugins but then when I opened the terminal and used nano there was nothing there

---------- Post added 10-10-15 at 12:32 PM ----------

I did also try to use nano editor as root....

And my workaround was to install google chrome to use the phone in my email account....

You added the repositories to two files repeatedly when you seemed to work through a howto several times. What you need to do is decide whether you want to keep google.list and google.list.save or google-talkplugin.list and google-talkplugin.list.save. The *.save file are backup copies and are not used by apt. After you deleted one set of those files you edit the other *.list file e.g. "sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-talkplugin.list", remove the duplicate lines, save and run "sudo apt-get update".

I still think you tried to edit the directory and not the files themselves with "sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d"

BTW: I use Pidgin to chat with Hangout/Google Talk users