Alright, I've recently acquired an old Mac iBook from my school who has thrown it out. I can't open -any- of the control panels and have never really been too fond of Macs but I wanna learn'em. ANyone have any ideas? I can't figure out how to tchange to a boot disk either with Ubuntu on it.

Do you know what version of the OS you're running? (Apple Icon in upper left corner > About This Macintosh)

9.2

Hmmm... I'm more familiar with OS 8, but I have a couple of ideas.
1)Try booting without extensions (hold Shift while booting), this usually kills software conflicts that cause problems.
2)Try updating to OS 9.2.1 ( http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75288 )
3)If you have a copy of the OS, try reinstalling. Extreme, but sometimes it's the only way to fix some problems.

I'm without internet access on the laptop and have no copy of the OS, how does stopping extensions help? Will it allow me to boot from CDs?

To boot from CD, hold either the "C" or "D" key while booting. (C for CD or D for Disk, I forget which it is, I haven't booted from CD in a while.) If you're trying to get Linux on there, your Mac should be new enough to just pop in an install CD, but check the documentation for the distro.

It's C to boot from a CD. Or hold down Option to select from all the bootable disks the Mac can find; if you want to boot from an HD attached via FireWire, for example.

What do you mean you can't open any of the control panels? What error do you get when you try to open one? Are you sure what you're opening is actually a control panel (in System Folder:Control Panels) and not an Extension or something?