Im always amazed at how fast people respond on here! Whenever I used to look for Windows help it would take days to get any sort of a response! Amazing! As for Debian, I'm half convinced to make the move, the only thing holding me back is that my USB modem is automatically installed by Mandrake during its installation process, whereas using Debian I would likely have to manually install it (which I attempted to do for 2 days on Red Hat, upgrading to RH9 halfway through in hope that that would lessen the problem but with no luck), so I think I will be sticking with Mandrake until I start using a connection via a router and a wireless network in a month or so (I'm upgrading to 1mb/s because my dad pays for 2 separate ADSL 512k lines at the moment and by combining them saves £20 a month, and since I don't download as seriously as I used to mp3 wise (since Ive noticed less and less people put high bitrate files up, and I'd rather pay for a song (even if it does mean handing money to the RIAA for them to spend on lawyers and cuban cigars) rather than have low sound quality! On that note, I can't get mldonkey to work (it won't connect to any network) so Im gonna go look for help on that, I should really stop spending all my time typing to my own thread and looking for solutions myself instead!

I noticed that some are in Europe but http://cart.cheapbytes.com/cgi-bin/cart has 9.2. I ordered mine yesterday.

This is going to be good, I hope.

Thanks to all who've contributed thus far here's an updated copy of my list of "to do", since I've cleared a lot off it in the last few hours:

Make Linux Look Better: Find out how to install the new Gnome Desktop, and then find betters icons for the taskbar and more applets.

Find out how to make the machine boot faster, e.g. stop loading of unnecessary modules to kernel. To this end I have adjusted the services which start at boot time, but I don't know how to rebuild the kernel, as someone has mentioned this will help. I don't know anything about the kernel and it's options but I'm eager (probably too eager, I'll probably break it) to customize my kernel, but I think thats at least a year away (until I decide to build my own linux OS from scratch...)

Get a copy of Java and some documentation/tutorials - I tried getting the download from Sun's site but it won't work - I'm not too worried about this because I think if I retrace my steps etc I will find that I did something wrong...

Find some games which run on Linux.

Get Nikto working properly - My only problem here is that its a PERL source file, and I don't know how to install them!

Does anyone know of a program designed to help you customize the IPTables file without having to learn the structure and syntax of it and edit it yourself!! I would far prefer this since I do not need the highly customized solution learning all that would allow me, I just want a reasonably solid solution. I have asked this in the security section but thought I would mention it here too since this is where Im asking all my 50 questions at once as someone told me not to do before (above) hehe

Get MLDonkey working - I have managed to install this - I found out the reason I could not before was because I was using the static library rather than shared (whilst I did not ascertain the root of the problem with the static file, I have found a workaround) HOWEVER it still will not connect?? As with above I have started a thread on this elsewhere but since this is my complete list of TODO I thought I should put it here aswell.

Look at Voice Recognition solutions available to Linux - I still haven't done anything to this end, I'm hoping that once I get WINE working the solution will be there!

Find out how to make high-quality VCDs from DVDs (I am very used to the technicalities of this on Windows btw) - I haven't done anything about this either yet since I've paused my online DVD rental service (that's how much time I'm spending on Linux hehe, my gf's getting jealous...)

Lastly, I have attempted to get WINE working but it always brings back the same error, I have posted about this elsewhere and here's a link to the thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=105507

BTW to everyone who's posted here, I am very grateful! After using Linux for about the last 4 months on off, I reckon I've done more with it in the last 2 days or so than in the last 4 months!!

"Get an advanced firewalling solution for Linux"

iptables is the way to go for this:

you can do a search here for iptables for examples, the best i've see was written by markus:

i just did a search and cant find it darn i know it's here tho

an online howto can be found on google im sure:

just do a google search on http://google.com/linux and search for iptables+howto

aarrggh

the easy urpmi page DOES cover mandrake 9.2

one needs to click on the little arrow on the right hand side of the box that says 9.1, and a whole new menu appears, which includes 9.2

("explore your environment more thoroughly"-this too all ppl who have posted in the last week sayin "what a shame easy urpmi doesn't cover 9.2)

I've now got WINE working - if anyone else is having problems with it look at my other threads I have explained the problem I had and how I solved it (it wasn't working because it was relating to my windows xp partition which I've now deleted), I've also had a look at some howto's about iptables but I think that solution is going to be too time consuming, perhaps there is a tool that would ask me questions and create rules that way (interactively?) I am aware this will not be as secure but to be honest I don't need bulletproof security at the moment, I just want a decent level of security.

Does anyone know how I would install Gnome 2.4 onto Mandrake 9.1? I currently have Gnome 2.2 (which came with the OS).

"the easy urpmi page DOES cover mandrake 9.2"
I saw it now. Wasn't there the last time I checked (the day after I got 9.2 from club). But they still only have plf but not the contribs even though most mirrors now have the contribs for 9.2.

Actually my last question (about Gnome) might as well ignore that since I'll be installing 9.2 freshly in a day or two (I was gonna download it last night but when I went to bed at 3am forgot hehe)

BTW I mentioned above I wanted to get Nikto working - its now working, I found out it was before because I didn't have a package it depended on (NET::SSLeay). Now I know how to install perl packages from source

Hehe just rebooted - well, tried to anyway! I can't boot Mandrake anymore so I'm having to use my Dad's computer (which is running XP). When I boot up it says something about a magic number and then asks me to press control-d or type my root password. Any suggestions?

Not sure about the magic number so hit ctrl D and it should reboot.

Did you shutdown properly? That is what usually causes that. I think. Is for me anyway.

Later

Mandrake 9.1 has comes with shorewall, which is a pretty good frontend for iptables/netfilter. Just look in the Mandrake Control Center under Security. Just uncheck "No firewall" and you're pretty well good to go.