[epec254]

What about your wonderful expierence with MBRs and McAffe, Sheri?

[purplehawk]

LMAO, Eric! I sure have NOT had the best of luck with antivirus programs!

I switched to McAfee after the Norton debacle and continued it with XP. Of course, I had nothing but trouble with McAfee and XP. Erased email accounts, wiped-out history - you name it, I had ill experiences with it. Then, after the idiotic dat release that toed-up with PC-Cillin in my BIOS and crashed my master boot record, I went back to Norton.

When this subscription runs out, I'm seriously thinking of Panda or some other program. Can't be worse than The Big Two, can it?

[epec254]

Panda Titanium can be...i tried to use, but it a bunch of problems with email - it would crash, make the send recieve time out, etc.

Panda Platnium i used for less than day, but didn't like it at all. The interface was not that great, and it had some wierd way of intergrating into Outlook.

I am using Norton Antivirus 2003 beta right now, its very stable, and has a lot of cool little features.

[\nomen]

I thought you had to register to access the Mandrake mirrors from within their site, but that wasn't so. Good.

www.linuxiso.org was a great resource, it's all there for grabs!

\nomen

[kanaloa]

How about the installation? Does it set up similar to a dual boot with XP or what?

What all should I know about this before even considering installing it?

Thanks

[\nomen]

The first thing to do is to prepare a space where linux can be installed. The best way, imho, is to use partitionmagic and create a new empty (unformatted) partition. Then let the linuxinstaller allocate and format that space like it wants to. It wants to make at least two partitions within that space. Just follow the suggestions. Give it some space to begin with, so you dont have to resize those partitions later. 5 GB will be more than enough.

The first cd is bootable, just pop it in and reboot, and you're going.

Linux will install it's own bootloader to the bootsector currently probably on tour XP partition. However, there is a way to install Linux alongside Windows without it touching the windows partition. Here's an exellent description (imho) on how to set up this dual boot. The trick is to install lilo (the linux bootloader) to the linuxpartition, then have the windows bootloader to call on it. The description is on Mandrake 7.2 and windows 2000, but It works exactly the same way with XP and Mandrake 8.2.

http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00011.asp

Last time I had trouble writing that "linux.bin" file to the floppy, Then I wrote it to /tmp I think, then e-mailed it to myself to access it from windows . But that was probably just my system. Try the floppy thing first.

have fun :D

\nomen

[purplehawk]

Eric, I could be talked into Norton 2003 at this point - but I'm not sure about a beta. As a rule Purp don't like betas! :B-fly:

[kanaloa]

Thanks \nomen. If I ever get up the courage to give that a shot... I'll be sure to try it. I would love to play with Linux for a change.

[\nomen]

Just do it, there's nothing to loose!

This method of installation is very safe. You will not be able to corrupt your windows

I guarantee you'll have it up and running in less than two hours.
or less or more :wink: depending on how fast p-magic work on your system.

Then, once it's installed, comes the fun and/or frustrating part; you have to learn to walk again.. Things are different! It can do everything windows can, well allmost, and smuch more. But not in the same ways!

\nomen

[hoss]

Eric, I could be talked into Norton 2003 at this point - but I'm not sure about a beta. As a rule Purp don't like betas! :B-fly:

The best Antivirus program I have found is free and doesn't muck with your computer. http://www.grisoft.com