Goodbye Mepis, Hello Kubuntu.

I have stopped playing with mepis now and am now trying to use Kubuntu. It is free, now and forever. K/Ubuntu is a community project not a one man show. I think some of the debian guys and gals are part of both distributions so lots of debian expertise seems to be on board which is good for everyone who wants to use a debian distro. OTOH Knoppix is still a cool distribution. If I could have got that to update easily (to unstable) I would have used knoppix. I upgraded my Kubuntu to breezy and lost almost everything. I had to reinstall almost every gui program. It is now starting to look like kubuntu hoary did before I futzed around with it. My move to linux is taking longer than I wished. Some of the programs I use don't have a linux equivalent. I wanted to use wine so I could use my legacy stuff but it seems I may have to buy Win4lin to get compatibility without hassles. But, being a miser I will probably keep on trying to get wine working.

Firefox is getting better, so is Thunderbird.

My webpage which points here I can no longer update. Since then I have changed my full time browser to Firefox. I use an extension with it called Tabbrowser Extensions, which adds more functions for the tabs. There are over a hundred other extensions to add to it giving many more functions but I use other programs instead of having them as part of my browser. If Firefox is used there are seldom bits of malware dropped into the computer. Occasionally I go back to Myie2(released as Maxthon now) if I need to use activex which isn't in Firefox.
Also, the antivirus, anti trojan, anti spyware programs I recommended need to be updated regularly. Adaware has a new program for home users. Spybot is now version 1.3. Spywareblaster is rewritten. A2 free has a new edition. I need to visit the home page regularly to make sure I have the latest program. They all regularly update the malware programs for which they are looking, so to stay reasonably safe I need to hit the update button in each program before I scan for malware. When I find no more updates it is probably because the program has been changed. (If unsure of how to use the programs read the help file.)
Lots of these programs have a switch to turn on auto updating, so turn it on if it exists.
A long time ago I bought a cd burner and got nero version 5 for free. However Nero haven't let me update for free forever. I found a very good freeware program called CDBurner XP Pro. Not quite up to Nero yet but getting closer with each release. I have used it with my dvd burner to back up my hard drive and I regularly burn isos with it. It is very good.
Although I love Pegasus mail I am using Mozilla Thunderbird at present because I am having trouble getting Pegasus to handle spam well enough. I may stay with Thunderbird as it is good enough with Spam but I want to go back to Pegasus. I have been advised to add programs to help Pegasus like mailwasher but I want to run one program for mail not a bunch. So until I can get Pegasus spam handling up to Thunderbird's standard I will use Thunderbird. Years ago the browsers in use were Mosaic and Netscape. I was a Netscape user. It's cool to go back to netscape via Firefox and Thunderbird. Apparently some government body in the USA has recommended that Internet Explorer no longer be used as it's a security risk. Another good reason to go Firefox.

Back to Debian

Well almost. There are a few debian distributions around which are much easier to set up than the original. I saw a review of one called Mepis which was a 2 CD download for the lot. After downloading and burning I found I didn't need the 2nd cd as it allows all the usual debian downloads which is a huge selection of software. Mepis installed almost more easily than Mandrake. I didn't need to do anything with the video or my mousepad and my trackball. On Mandrake I had to search the net and install software to get mousepad and trackball to work, as well as play with xfconfig settings. Looks like I go back to debian. Mandrake isn't any longer as pleasant to use. Although I am a mandrake club member it is a pain to get software. I am updating from debian experimental which might mean crashes, but not so far.

Why use free email?

I have changed my isp every 1-2 years. My first isp folded after around a year, a year later, so did my second. Each one since then has become more expensive in relation to the rest over around 18 months. It has been cheaper to change than stay, so I did. The most stable part of my internet experience has been my email. Some people recommend free email is best for unnecessary mail, spam and stuff. That, too, is true in lots of cases. But not so with me, isps come and go. Yahoo remains.

Swen.a

Very annoying worm. A google search, or any of the other engines most likely will find many fixes you can download and run. Don't forget to apply the fixes after rebooting and hitting F8 on a windows computer while doing so. That way the fix programs are more likely to take effectively.

Free online Virus/Trojan scanning

Lots of companies will scan for viruses and trojans for free online. If I can't get rid of malware with the programs on my computer I go to one of these. A google search will find heaps.

Operating Systems I would prefer to use instead of Windows

Mandrake is a Linux distribution which I use as my alternate operating system to Windows. If I could get my XP programs to work on it well and cheaply I would use it instead of XP. Now I have a dual boot system and I am only playing with linux instead of seriusly moving over to it. Mandrake started it's life as Redhat with Kde installed instead of Gnome and some other differences. Since its acceptance on the opensource network it has become a separate entity. Kde and Gnome are gui(Graphical User Interface) desktops. At the time Kde was older and more developed than Gnome with a different licence. Kde wasn't opensource, Gnome was, I think they are more equal in standing and capabilities now but I have an idea Kde is used by more people and is a better desktop. Kde became opensource at least a year ago, more likely 2.
I have tried many Linux distros including Debian. Debian's philosophy is wonderful but I had too many problems trying to install it. I spent 3 days and nights trying to install it a few years ago without success. I hope it is easier now. Mandrake 9.1 took me 45 minutes to install, with gigabytes of additional software, compared to around 1 1/2 hours for win XP, with nothing.
There are many distributions of Linux and at least 2 other OS around. Freebsd and the rest of the BSD clan, with the Mac OS too. Mac is also released as an opensource OS called Open Darwin, based on FreeBsd I believe. If I could get the brilliant graphics which is part of mac popularity and XP programs to work I would use Darwin. VMware may present my opportunity to do so.