Installing Mate

["Ethan Rosenberg, PhD" <erosenberg@hygeiabiomedical.com>]

Dear List -

With the new Gnome desktop, I am up against a brick wall.  For some 
reason I cannot get apt-get to work. I have also tried the irc channel, 
with no results.

I have read the Wiki, followed it with no luck.

This is the output from apt-get:

root@meow:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# dpkg --configure -a
root@meow:/etc/apt/sources.list.d#  apt-get update && apt-get
autoclean && apt-get -f dist-upgrade && apt-get autoremove
E: Type 'apt-get' is not known on line 1 in source list
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/mate.list
E: The list of sources could not be read.

TIA

Ethan