By all means, welcome! I been a Linux junky for a few years. I love it, except my hardward is getting old, I'm considering a workstation for www.pogolinux.com after my tax refund comes around.

Seawarrior

Yeah, you can open up the README file a print it out if you like and keep it handy

Just the ISOs that says Mandrake92-cd1xxxx, cd2xxxx cd3xxxx

Try another FTP site. That site you mentioned apparently is very busy. Try another site. The time it takes depends on your connection and how busy the site is. Some of this sites are kinda busy during the day, mostly students. Yes, it could take a day, but try another site. Mandrake has about 20 or so "mirror" sites to download from in the US

Once you boot off the 1st CD, it will completed format your hardrive, not immediately, but a few steps later. You will asked questions like, mouse config, time config. etc. I don't remember the exact sequence.

If you are installing on an old IBM PC, use Mandrake 9.2/i586 ISO Image

Try Mandrake Linux @ http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ftp.php3#iso. Download the ISO images ( there are three) of Mandrake 9.2 (current stable release) to your WIndows system( create a separate folder) and then burn each ISO image to a CD-R/CD-RW. Each ISO image will just about fill the CD. Make sure you label each one carefully. Power up your old system you saild you were going to use and put the first CD in and reboot off that CD. Once you have booted off the first CD, there wiil be an installation GUI interface. Surf around the Mandrake site and there are some screen shots of the installation. There are many Linux distros (distributions), but Mandrake, Red Hat and Suse. I tried Mandrake 9.2 recently and I liked it. Get this much done, and I will be happy to help you install/tweak it. Need help downloading let me know.

Seawarrior

Earthlink is a major ISP in the US. I have been using it for a long time and I get a consistent T1 to T2 connection speed. They don't give popup ads like RR does or AOL on your startpage. I upgraded from dialup to cable without a hitch, then again, Dell is packaging Earthlink with new PC so there may be some differences in the packaging deal between Dell and Earthlink. Images loaded fine for me even back when I had dialup and still does quite well when I travel with my notebook and use dialup. There are more and more people going online everyday and the net does get crowded. I would check to see if you have the lastest Macromedia flash browser plugin from www. macromedia.com to help load your images a little better. Also, clear your web browser cache and check your speed from a speed test site like www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest. There are other test sites out there too.

Seawarrior

Terence, I am majoring in Accounting with a minor in Bus Admin, will sit for CPA exam, maybe pursue Masters in Accounting. Accouting has far more job stability and flexibility to perform different types of financial related positions than any IT career I know of. Made Dean's list (ok I'm bragging)Will graduate in May '05. Most likely to pursue Federal employment and apply my Naval service time to federal retirement.

Seawarrior

Thanks, Maggie. Yeah, I lost a good salary, but in a way I am glad it happened.

Seawarrior

yeah...just love it. My wife works while I go back to school. After being shafted by IBM in '02, and worked in IT for 13 years, the IT job market is so bad, I have go back to school to change careers. It is hard, real hard.

yeah...I know...I just go with the flow...ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz..............

Aon_Daonna
Yes, that is the bad side of Linux...a lot of m$ winders apps have not been ported/converted to Linux, then again there are m$ winders apps/programs that are not always needed in a UNIX/Linux environment. Most major LInux distros have all the basics, but I use Quicken 2004 and I am still tied to m$ winders. There is Gnucash (www.gnucash.org) that will import Quicken files nicely, but if you do online banking, most major banks in the USA only supports m$ winders, maybe mac but not gnucash...at least not yet. Some interesting news on Linux at eWeek.com...
http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,4148,1237915,00.asp

Seawarrior

Oh...that's ok...just trying to help and maybe save some $$$. OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org)is available free for M$ Winders too. Debian? hmmm... I tried it earlier last year. I go lost somewhere during installaion...not the most user friendly distro for desktops...servers maybe yes or developer platform...not for the faint of heart.

Seawarrior

scottish2 and others frustrated with M$ Winders:

I am running an OS called Linux, which is a UNIX clone for desktop PCs and others. There are many "distributions" of Linux. I have used SuSE, Red Hat/Fedora, Mandrake, Gentoo. Go to www.distrowatch.com to look at them. Just do a search on linux and there are tons of sites for "newbies" and "lugs" which are Linux User Groups. I am using both Red Hat 9 and Fedora Core 1 which I use OpenOffice, and complete office suite for Linux, and Winders other OSs @ www.openoffice.org. My primary email client is Evolution @ www.ximian.com and Mozilla 1.5 web browser @ www.mozilla.org which has a built in popup ad blocker all for free. You can download ISO images to hard drive then burn to a CD-R/CD-RW to install free from Red Hat, Fedora, Mandrake, free FTP download from SuSE. A high speed connection is desirable. All of the above mentioned packages come with most distributions. Also, you can download AOL messenger and Yahoo messenger for Linux free also. I have "dual boot" environment, i.e. when the system is powered on, you chose your OS...Linux or M$ WInders. The only thing that keeps me tied to WInders is Quicken.
If you have a big enough hard drive or add a drive, you can install it. But the first thing to do before you can install it is you must create a linux partition on your hard drive, which is another story. Email me if interested and I can try and help.
Where linux was born...http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/
http://www.desktoplinux.com/
http://www.desktopos.com/
Seawarrior

CelticRose, if you already have Adware, you have to change/adjust the settings; if you have Adware 6.0,
start the program, click on Scan Now, select scan mode, choose default scanning options, click customize, and check drives and folders; scan archives. Then come down to Scan Memory and Registry; check scan active processes, scan registry, deep scan registry, scan hosts files, then a button at bottom right, "Proceed" Then "next" That should do it.

Seawarrior

CelticRose,
Go to www.lavasoftusa.com and download the free version on Adware. It works for me. Go to the Internet Explorer web browser toolbar and change the homepage setting. I friend of mine had a similar problem and it worked. You need to change your firewall settings. I use Zone Alarm from www.zonelabs.com. Need more help, I will chat with you...

Seawarrior

Eamon,
Yes I bet Willd Bill is a character! I would love to talk to Major WInters. Go to www.wildbillguarnere.com
I will keep the gathering in mind.

Currahee!

Seawarrior

Annebelle,
I was on AFS-6 and USS America CV66 (www.ussamerica.org). When I was on the AFS, we saw Naples a lot.

Eamon,
Yes it is Easy Co., 506th Reg, 101st Airborne. HBO had a miniseries about Easy Company back in Sept 2001. The web link is www.hbo.com/band. As a matter of fact, I had a weekend to Munich, Germany once and while in transit, I saw and exit sign from the autobahn for Berchtesgaden, which is a resort town near Hitler's Eagles Nest where Easy Co. took the place at the end of WW2. The tour was scheduled to go there, but the weather did not cooperate.

Seawarrior

Well, one of the most memorable experiences was a weekend tour to Rome during the week of Christmas. Our ship came to Naples (Napoli), Italy for about 2 weeks or so for Christmas. Well, Christmas day fell on a weekend, and there was a sponsored 2 day Christmas tour to Rome. There I saw many ancient Roman ruins, The Colosseum, St. Peter's Cathedral, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel. I attended the midnight mass at St. Peter's and the place was packed with people from all over the world...and it went from midnight to about 3:30 am. The Sistine Chapel was especially interesting where Michelangelo paintings on the ceiling can be seen. Restoration work was in progress at the time and with all the tarps and scaffolding around it was hard to see some of his work. Go to www.christusrex.org and there are some links to the "Capella Sistina".

Seawarrior