Good. Let's get back to that first command. Obviously your version of apt does not include the check command, so let's revert to:

Something happened in the last terminal session . I went to my last term window and a warning came up :

john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
[sudo] password for john:

(gedit:23980): Gtk-WARNING **: Calling Inhibit failed: GDBus.Errorrg.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files

** (gedit:23980): WARNING **: Set document metadata failed: Setting attribute metadata::gedit-spell-enabled not supported

** (gedit:23980): WARNING **: Set document metadata failed: Setting attribute metadata::gedit-encoding not supported

sudo apt-get check


I did the next command in a new terminal and got :

john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$ sudo apt-get check
[sudo] password for john:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libperl5.22 : Depends: perl-modules-5.22 (>= 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.3) but 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.2 is installed
perl : Depends: perl-modules-5.22 (>= 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.3) but 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.2 is installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.
john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$

I did tell you to ignore any warning messages when running sudo gedit. So, you can ignore those warnings.

As for the output from sudo apt-get check, try running:

as it suggests.

Yes you did . I'm so confused/perplexed.

john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$ sudo apt-get -f install
[sudo] password for john:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
fonts-horai-umefont fonts-unfonts-core fonts-wqy-microhei kde-l10n-engb
libasn1-8-heimdal:i386 libasound2:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386
libasyncns0:i386 libavahi-client3:i386 libavahi-common-data:i386
libavahi-common3:i386 libcapi20-3 libcapi20-3:i386 libcups2:i386
libdbus-1-3:i386 libexif12:i386 libflac8:i386 libgd3:i386 libgif7:i386
libgmp10:i386 libgnutls30:i386 libgphoto2-6:i386 libgphoto2-port12:i386
libgssapi-krb5-2:i386 libgssapi3-heimdal:i386 libhcrypto4-heimdal:i386
libheimbase1-heimdal:i386 libheimntlm0-heimdal:i386 libhogweed4:i386
libhx509-5-heimdal:i386 libicu55:i386 libidn11:i386 libieee1284-3:i386
libjack-jackd2-0:i386 libjbig0:i386 libjpeg-turbo8:i386 libjpeg8:i386
libjson-c2:i386 libk5crypto3:i386 libkeyutils1:i386 libkrb5-26-heimdal:i386
libkrb5-3:i386 libkrb5support0:i386 liblcms2-2:i386 libldap-2.4-2:i386
libllvm3.8:i386 libllvm4.0 libllvm4.0:i386 libltdl7:i386 libmpg123-0:i386
libnettle6:i386 libodbc1 libogg0:i386 libopenal1:i386 libosmesa6
libosmesa6:i386 libp11-kit-gnome-keyring:i386 libp11-kit0:i386
libpulse0:i386 libroken18-heimdal:i386 libsamplerate0:i386 libsane:i386
libsasl2-2:i386 libsasl2-modules:i386 libsasl2-modules-db:i386
libsndfile1:i386 libspeexdsp1:i386 libsqlite3-0:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386
libtasn1-6:i386 libtiff5:i386 libusb-1.0-0:i386 libv4l-0:i386
libv4lconvert0:i386 libvorbis0a:i386 libvorbisenc2:i386 libvpx3:i386
libwind0-heimdal:i386 libwrap0:i386 libxcomposite1:i386 libxcursor1:i386
libxi6:i386 libxinerama1:i386 libxml2:i386 libxpm4:i386 libxrandr2:i386
libxslt1.1:i386 libxt6:i386 linux-headers-4.10.0-27
linux-headers-4.10.0-27-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-28
linux-headers-4.10.0-28-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-30
linux-headers-4.10.0-30-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-32
linux-headers-4.10.0-32-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-33
linux-headers-4.10.0-33-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-35
linux-headers-4.10.0-35-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-37
linux-headers-4.10.0-37-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-38
linux-headers-4.10.0-38-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-40
linux-headers-4.10.0-40-generic linux-headers-4.10.0-42
linux-headers-4.10.0-42-generic linux-headers-4.13.0-26
linux-headers-4.13.0-26-generic linux-headers-4.13.0-31
linux-headers-4.13.0-31-generic linux-headers-4.13.0-32
linux-headers-4.13.0-32-generic linux-headers-4.13.0-36
linux-headers-4.13.0-36-generic linux-headers-4.8.0-53
linux-headers-4.8.0-53-generic linux-headers-4.8.0-54
linux-headers-4.8.0-54-generic linux-headers-4.8.0-56
linux-headers-4.8.0-56-generic linux-headers-4.8.0-58
linux-headers-4.8.0-58-generic linux-image-4.10.0-27-generic
linux-image-4.10.0-28-generic linux-image-4.10.0-30-generic
linux-image-4.10.0-32-generic linux-image-4.10.0-33-generic
linux-image-4.10.0-35-generic linux-image-4.10.0-37-generic
linux-image-4.10.0-38-generic linux-image-4.10.0-40-generic
linux-image-4.10.0-42-generic linux-image-4.13.0-26-generic
linux-image-4.13.0-31-generic linux-image-4.13.0-32-generic
linux-image-4.13.0-36-generic linux-image-4.8.0-53-generic
linux-image-4.8.0-54-generic linux-image-4.8.0-56-generic
linux-image-4.8.0-58-generic linux-image-extra-4.10.0-27-generic
linux-image-extra-4.10.0-28-generic linux-image-extra-4.10.0-30-generic
linux-image-extra-4.10.0-32-generic linux-image-extra-4.10.0-33-generic
linux-image-extra-4.10.0-35-generic linux-image-extra-4.10.0-37-generic
linux-image-extra-4.10.0-38-generic linux-image-extra-4.10.0-40-generic
linux-image-extra-4.10.0-42-generic linux-image-extra-4.13.0-26-generic
linux-image-extra-4.13.0-31-generic linux-image-extra-4.13.0-32-generic
linux-image-extra-4.13.0-36-generic linux-image-extra-4.8.0-53-generic
linux-image-extra-4.8.0-54-generic linux-image-extra-4.8.0-56-generic
linux-image-extra-4.8.0-58-generic ocl-icd-libopencl1:i386 odbcinst
odbcinst1debian2 p11-kit-modules:i386 p7zip ttf-wqy-microhei unixodbc
wine-gecko2.21 wine-gecko2.21:i386 wine-mono0.0.8 winetricks
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
perl-modules-5.22
The following packages will be upgraded:
perl-modules-5.22
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 77 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/2,646 kB of archives.
After this operation, 3,072 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

I enter Y, correct?

or do I run in term : 'sudo apt autoremove'?

Don't worry, you're having to learn a lot quite quickly.

No. You enter N. That's a heck of a lot of packages, including kernels, and so we need to be cautious.

Can you enter the following command so that we can find out which kernel you're currently running:

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$ uname -r
4.13.0-38-generic
john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$

I think we should be ok (most of those packages to be removed appear to be 32-bit packages and your current kernel doesn't appear among the kernels). But first, in case anything goes awry, do you have any documents and other files on your computer that you should make copies of to an external device?

Yes of course, but only have a 16gb thumb drive and DVD writing seems to take forever

My documents are not coppying to my thumbdrive

Error creating directory: Cannot allocate memory

Perhaps the thumbdrive is full?

With the thumbdrive inserted, can you please enter the following command so that we can see which device the thumbdrive is being "registered" as:

They've been copied to DVD ok. But here is the command :

john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$ lsblk -o +FSTYPE
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT FSTYPE
sdb 8:16 1 15G 0 disk
├─sdb2 8:18 1 15G 0 part
└─sdb1 8:17 1 16M 0 part /media/john/9411-F5AF vfat
sr0 11:0 1 2K 0 rom
sda 8:0 0 298.1G 0 disk
├─sda4 8:4 0 1K 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 214.6G 0 part /mnt/01FACCC417C0A4CC ntfs
├─sda5 8:5 0 14G 0 part [SWAP] swap
├─sda3 8:3 0 60G 0 part / ext4
└─sda1 8:1 0 9.5G 0 part ntfs

If they've been copied to DVD, then that's good enough.

For future reference though, that command shows that your thumbdrive has two partitions, the first of which is only 16MB, the second of which is probably unformatted. You will need to sort that out at some point.

So, back to the packages. Now run:

john@john-HP-Compaq-6200-Pro-SFF-PC:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove
[sudo] password for john:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libperl5.22 : Depends: perl-modules-5.22 (>= 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.3) but 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.2 is installed
perl : Depends: perl-modules-5.22 (>= 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.3) but 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.2 is installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

do I run 'sudo apt-get -f install' to correct this ?