No, unfortunately, just dual booting, which is a major pain. But here in a few days, I won't have to deal with that anymore...

excuse my stupidity, but I know very little about programming (only some java and MS Visual Basic). I am wanting to teach myself-what all do I need to have loaded to start-like what is a simple or good starter language, as far as those offered with linux? What all packages to load, etc. And where is a good place to get documentation/help me's/how to's, etc? Let me know some good books and/or websites/resources.

The linux documentation project would be the best place to start, followed by google linux.

Aussie, I think that link on google is wrong. Here's the link that your probably lookin' for http://directory.google.com/Top/Comp...Systems/Linux/

http://www.google.com/linux
Try it, you might be surprised....

Sorry about the delay. I still haven't gotton the 8.2 CD1
while most newbies have it. Plus, I messed up my Linux.

I'm in KDE. Let's see. You're missing something here &
there.

First, try not to manually link/unlink stuff especially
devices. It's hard enough to install Linux perfectly for
a newcomer.

Your HardDrake is mostly correct.

Mine:
CD-ROMS
/dev/hdc, ATAPI/IDE
/dev/scd0, SCSI

The SCSI part is required for CDRW drives.

Yours:
CDROM: /dev/had atapi/ide

This one should be /dev/hda, right? If so, I am a bit puzzled
as hda is almost always the first IDE harddisk.

Next move onto your /etc/fstab.

It looks like your CD drives are on IDE1 on motherboard. I
wouldn't do that if I were you. HD is always on IDE1. CD
on IDE2.

Piece of advice: divide HD into 3 partitions: Win, Win temp
d:\My Documents and Linux. You could share files between
the 2 via the d:\. That's what I do. I put all downloads
there and back up some files there too. You can link My Doc
in Windows by right-clicking its icon on desktop, properties.

Mine:
/dev/hda7 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda2 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/mnt/cdrom /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
/mnt/floppy /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=vfat,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,sync,codepage=850 0 0
noauto /dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,codepage=850 0 0
noauto /dev/hda8 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,codepage=850 0 0
noauto /dev/hda9 /mnt/win_e vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda10 /mnt/win_f vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,codepage=850 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

supermount eliminates manual mounting.

In my terminal:
lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 13 Mar 20 17:15 /dev/cdrom -> cdroms/cdrom0
cdroms/cdrom0 being yellow on black.

ls -l /dev/cdroms
total 0
lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 34 Dec 31 1969 cdrom0 -> ../scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/cd

Recommedation: reinstall linux.

Reading: http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/index.html

As for programming, I would suggest you start with shell
scripts. Don't laugh. It's interesting and rewarding to
learn it. You could write menus for your husband. You
could automate basic jobs like formatting floppies.

Good luck!