Hey, can someone tell me how I can set LILO to boot to windows as a default. My wife and kid don't need to work in Linux :(

Also, I have done a bit of C++ programming, but I don't know how to access the compiler in Linux. Would appreciate any help on either of these two issues. Thanks in advance!

Hello,
To change which OS is booted by default you need to edit the /etc/lilo.conf file. Look for a line that says something like 'default=linux' and change that to what LILO knows as the name of your windows partition. (most likely 'dos' or 'windows').

As for a C++ compiler gcc comes standard with Linux installations, just type 'gcc -o foo foo.c' to compile foo.c and get foo as the executable.

Unfortunately I don't know of any descent Linux C/C++ compiler, that's y I stick with M$ Visual C++, I don't like M$ but Visual Studio is a great product, the debuger is way better than Borland's IMO!

whoa! What's wrong with gcc/egcs? Are you saying that VC++ is better??

IMHO Visual C++ is the best C++ compiler in the market right now!

I think you may be confusing a compiler with an IDE. Visual C++ is both an IDE and a compiler, egcs is just a compiler. A compiler JUST compiles code. The syntax highlighting, name completion, GUI front-end is the IDE. IMHO egcs is MUCH better at compiling. If you play with emacs a bit you really can get it to do some amazing things, it just not as "out of the box" as VC++.