Ok, using KDE I found out how to get root access to the relevant files and edited as above to give me Internet access.

I then ran apt-get update and apt-get upgrade

I then tried to install a couple programs such as synaptic but have been getting the following error for all of them:

debconf:unable to initialize frontend:Gnome
debconf:unable to load gnome - is libgnome-perl installed?
debconf: falling back to frontend:Dialog
Reading database ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libzvt2_1.4.2-8_i386.deb (--unpack(:
files list file for package 'icewm-common' is missing final newline
Errors were encountered while processing:
#same line as 3 above
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned and error code

Any tips?

Trevor