[Techtalk] thanks for all the help!

[Sam Bradshaw]

Thank you all for your help!!

Thank you also "Hamster" for you philosophical advice and moral support. I
think you are totally right, I have to just tackle on thing at a time.. How
do I know if I have lilo or the other thing by the way? Will it say on boot
up? Also I have a fast AMD machine, why is boot up so slow with Linux?

I definitely need a firewall (on nt2000 I have mcafee firewall, seems to be
doing the trick), because of some postings that I made on a "religious" user
group people are not trying to destroy my computer non-stop. I was trying to
help someone out who was stuck in a cult on a Yahoo group, little did I
realize that my static IP (or semi static dhcp, it never changes
though)would get around so quickly through the Yahoo email system. I have a
cable modem you see. So when I go to Linux I don't want to have things go to
hell overnight.. Also it would be nice to know how to figure out a way how
to hack into these horrible cult members machines that are trying to get
into my machine (actually got in several times before the personal
firewall). If you are interested to see what that hype is about I can send
you the URL to the Yahoo group if you are interested in this issue. All that
aside:

OK, now because of your responses I have more questions and want to add
additional information.

1)I have the free downloaded version of Mandrake 8.0

2)I added a viewsonic plat panel display in addition to my fancy mouse and
keyboard -- everything now looks like shite! I support the who Linux idea,
but so far I have been struggling. Maybe I should just switch to Red Hat and
buy it?

3)I am now "feeling" that maybe I should buy Linux because it seems that the
manuals would help me (someone suggested this)

4) Which Linux should I buy?? Should I rush out and buy Mandrake or Red
hat??

5) In relation to the excellent suggestions of the hamster - I decided to
prioritize getting USB to work because I can't type or move the mouse
pointer around without getting the keyboard and mouse to work. That probably
sounds like a good plan!?! In that case would a "newer" Mandrake version or
other distribution take care of this issue do you think?

6) All this talk of installation handlers has me confused.. Someone pointed
out a cmd line command that would allow me to "install" a downloaded file
(rpm).. What the heck is an RPM, is it like a zip? If I don't use the
command line, what is this other installation thingy about?

Sorry to be such a dummy looser...just kidding!

Sam