Well, I played with a Mandrake 9.0 installation on an older system I had. Went smooth, so I decided that I do really want to learn more about Linux and just installed Mandrake 9.0 on an Athlon XP 1700+ system I have. Not a problem. However, I do have questions.

I run Norton's on all my MS boxes. Do I need an antivirus program and what is available? How is it installed? The Mandrake 9.0 was so painless, I hope that other programs are as easy.

I need to get to my printer which is connected to my main MS machine. In fact my DSL is shared by my main machine and networked. This system found the network and the Internet with no problem. But not the Printer. Do I need to learn SAMBA or is there an easy way to do it? The Wizard in the installtion could not find it even though I thought I told the installer my network name. I really don't think that the network is available, just the Internet connection on it.

What about JAVA applications? Do I need to install a plugin for Konqueror?

How do I get some decent backgrounds? Is there a tutorial somewhere? No I have not taken the time to read the manual disk, if it's there about about a hint.

Thanks

If you don't work in root exvironment then you don't need an antivirus running on your machine.
start the printerdrake from the root prompt and go to expert mode there choose the remote SMB/CFIS option and continue fill the appropriate parts, If Mandrake does not detect your network printer driver you can choose the closest one from the many available choices

Well Mozilla will be a better option if you wanna try JAVA though Konqueror supports it too.

Uase KdeControl Manager or Roght Click on desktop to get the desktop manager and change the wallpapers.

You can get themes for KDE and gnome at http://themes.freshmeat.org

Don't need an Antivirus for my email? I know that most of the email viruses seem to be Outlook or Outlook Express specific. But I would not want to unknowingly forward anything and since I am active in a lot of places I seem to get more than my share. I have seen Norton's catch as many as 45 emails with the Klez in one day. Oh and I think I asked about Konquerer but I really meant for this in requards to Kmail.

I need to find PrinterDrake. I had thought I found that on my other machine and it was unable to find the printer for some reason. So far, I have not found PrinterDrake on this system. You said to go to Root. And look for???

Got the background changed. Have not played with themes yet.

There are some JAVA applets that pop up at different places I visit on the web. Just want to make sure they are ok. Mozilla huh. I will try to find it and see what it looks like.

I need to do some general tweeking to the Font types and sizes and button sizes. Some of these things are so small they are hard to see. Not as easy to do in Linux it seems. Some tips here would be nice.

Thanks

There are some anti-virus products coming out for Linux. Linux is becoming more of a target for a variety of jerks, unfortunately. You can do a search at www.google.com/linux for antivirus or av and get a list of links. Some will be free, some not. You can also do a SEARCH here in LQ for the same antivirus or av references and see some previous discussions on the subject.

Most viruses that you you address list to spread only work with outlook. So far I haven't received or send any virus using linux.
So far I haven't heard any alarming news from the linux community either that would have me get a antivirus.

I would just make sure that you have a good firewall and don't log on to the internet as root.

Anne