First, not a computer literate person, not even a novice- so please use small words.

I recently made the switch to ubuntu, it came preloaded on my new laptop that I order from a big tech dot com site. The version on it is 12.04 (i think) and 64bit.

This system has a lot that I like but it is quirky for me to say the least. Apparently I have held broken packages and have no way of knowing how to find them. I discovered this when trying to download (from software center) VLC so that I could watch some movies I had on an external hard-drive. Unmet dependencies error and held broken package errors abound while trying to fix the problem. Ive scoured this site and other and followed almost all the suggestions to a T but still I am unable to fix anything.

My computer is partitioned (but I don't even know how to get to the otherside so to speak).

I would like to know; can I put the newer 13.04 OS on one side of the partition and then delete the older version on the other side?

or, can I install 13.04 over the existing 12.04?

What would I need to do this?

An obstacle that I have is this, I am currently serving in Afghanistan so going someplace to buy something or running down to a computer store for service support is out of the question.

I very much appreciate your help, cause right now this computer is nothing more than a word processor, which would be fine if all i wanted was a word processor.

Thanks in advance.