Alright heres the deal. Im a HS kid whos pretty good with computers. Im new to linux, but Im semi-proficient, or in other words "decent". I run a Fedora 5 on a T43 with GNOME.

My questions are as follows:

1. I opened a port to use for dling bittorrents via Azureus. Is this a big security risk on Linux?
2. I dont like Mozilla firefox too much--Im a big fan of konqueror. Is it possible to use konqueror on the GNOME desktop, and if so how?
3. How can I speed up GNOME--when I minimize windows I get black trails, if you know what im talking about. I want this residue to go away.
4. Im dual booting with XP. How do I make it so that I can read/write files from XP/Linux from both Os's. Access Linux files from XP and vice versa. I want to convert Linux to my OS of choice.

Thank you very much for your responses. Id just like to say that this forum has really helped me understand linux.

welcome to the forums!

Check out the Linux-NTFS project at http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ for accessing your XP files (if you are using the NTFS filesystem of course). As for accessing your Linux partitions on Windows? I'm not sure about that. I use Samba for accessing shares on a remote client/server but not on the same hard drive.

my answers:
1. this is not a big security risk as long as u configure firewall well (to block unwated ports etc) & work as normal user (not root)
2. it is possible, but you would have to install kde & then you can run konqueror while logged into gnome.

3. sorry,i m not a GNOME user...

4. Use ext2fs driver from http://www.fs-driver.org/ to read/write your linux parittions (i hope they are ext2/ext3).
Use http://freshmeat.net/projects/captive/ to enable NTFS read/write thru linux

Have fun..

Thanks Guys:

I am able to read/write files from XP to Linux thanks to your help! As for the GNOME problems and porting Konqueror to GNOME without installing KDE, if anyone knows please help.

Thank you for your prompt replies!

It doesn't look like it's possible to have konquror without the rest of KDE. It's part of the base kde system, so you need to install that. If you install a package called kdebase or something close to that, it will be the minimal amount of KDE stuff to get konqueror, but it will still include a lot of other things.

glad you got it working! :-)

You'll need to have KDE installed to use Konqueror no two ways about it unfortunately. In regards to NTFS writing in linux, Google for ntfs-3g. Those guys are claiming a native NTFS driver thats quicker than the kernels ext3 driver...

Thanks guys: I got the file sharing dilemma resolved. Now I have 1 more big question:

I have a T43, adn I want to configure the ACPI power settings (sleep, hibernate, etc.). I read the thinkwiki page, and followed the instructions but it did not work. Anybody have any ideas?

You'll need to tell us how it didn't work. Get any errors and if so what were they? When you try to put it to sleep what happens?