[vox] re: a dual boot system?

[Bill Kendrick]

On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 11:44:31AM -0800, Cylar Z wrote:
> In any case, can I get SuSE/Debian free like I can
> Fedora Core, or are those commercial distros that I
> have to buy?

Debian is free.  SUSE is a commercial Linux distro, now owned by
Novell.  There is a free version you can download, if I recall correctly.


> Someone said that Debian includes a large
> set of native drivers and this I found extremely
> appealing. If available free, what is the best mirror
> for the download?

I believe they were talking about SUSE, actually.
For getting Debian, just go to http://www.debian.org/ and follow the links
to download Debian.

I usually start with a small net-install disc (about 100MB?) to install
the base system.  Then the installer allows me to fetch all of the software
I want/need right over the DSL.

(So instead of downloading and burning a large set of ISOs, which contains
10s of 1000s of packages I _don't_ care about, I'll simply download _only_
the packages I care about, directly over DSL.)


> Another question. Windows has many
> antispyware/antivirus programs available for it.
> Is/are there comparable programs available for Linux
> which I can download? 

There are.  Typically, though, those applications are meant to
protect any Windows systems on your network. ;^)  (i.e., you can have
your Linux-based mailserver do all of the virus checking for all of your
Windows-based PCs in an office.)


> I know that Linux is less suceptible to this sort of
> thing than Windows, but I'm told that some Linux
> malware does exist, and I want my father's computer to
> be as secure as absolutely possible. While he does
> have a DSL connection, I have already taken the
> precaution of putting his computer behind a
> router/firewall.

That's an excellent first step.  That's about where I stopped, when
doing my security. :^)  I go by the (probably naiive) belief that if
they can't even get into my LAN, I don't have to worry about them
hacking into my specific PC or my wife's laptop (or our TiVo, or whatever
else gets connected to our LAN).

(Not that I'm using Telnet instead of SSH, even within my LAN,
or anything...)


> In short, I'm sick and tired of the Internet "messing"
> with it and screwing it up so he can't use it to get
> work-related communiques. In all honesty it's partly
> his fault for clicking on popups, so I need to put the
> kabosh on those as much as possible so he isn't fooled
> into installing any more trojans.

Browsers like Firefox and Konqueror are typically quite good about
blocking pop-ups.  I don't often hit sites that throw them at me... it's
typically the random news or blog that I hit via Slashdot or some other
news source. >:^P  But when they do appear, I simply get a little notification
that the blocking has occurred.

Does Internet Explorer even have a pop-up blocking feature?
(I kind of assume it _doesn'_t, otherwise why would all of the AOLs and
Yahoo!s out there be offering it as a 'feature' of their Internet service!?!)

-bill!