I guess I need another hobby
 

I have a couple of older laptops that I'm not using and was considering installing Linux on the PC. For those in the know, what is involved in a Linux install and what software is out there for Linux. How does the software compare and what about firewall/antivirus software.

Linux and Open Office should do about everything you'll need. No A/V is needed and Linux has it's own built-in firewall. Much simpler than Windoze and it runs well on older desktop PCs and laptops.

I have TONS of experience with Linux, as easy to pop the install CD, answer a few basic questions (language, time zone, etc.) and there you are. As Art says Open Office is very good, the Open Source mail readers are excellent (unless you have a Hotmail account).

Ping me if you need anything, even install CD's, typing this on Fedora 7 (Beta)

James,

Was thinking of doing the same. Have a friend who did the same a while back and he said that the old laptop ran a lot faster with less RAM and slower processor than it ever did on Windoz.

Jordi,

Which version of Linux is the preferred version these days? Last I looked it was SUSE.

Thx,

Joe

Will Linux play nicely with wintel computers on a network?

The server is Win2000, but the stations are XP pro. Would I be insane to put a Linux out there as a workstation?

Joe, enterprises are 50/50 between Red Hat Enterprise and SUSE, the big distributions.

End users a combination of Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware, etc.

Linux plays very nice with Windows, my machines at home are a mix of NT, XP, 2000 and several flavors of Linux, all talk to each other quite nicely.

I recently put Ubuntu on an older Thinkpad that I have. It was Easy to use with a very nice GUI and all, but it kept locking up. So I downloaded CentOS (which I think is like Red Hat) and it works really good. Just not as pretty.

Best part is that it is free. It is taking a little getting used to.

Knoppix and now Fedora 7 is the best way to get started, both offer a CD version that you can boot from, no need to reformat/repartition your existing hard drive (the most difficult part of installing any Linux) to give it a try. If you like it they have a 'Install to Disk' option to have a permanent partition. Both offer a great 'boot manager'

Jordi,

Ok, looking at Fedora I went here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ then to the "torrents" page and OMG got a whole page of possible downloads. Most of the items there are version 6, not the version 7 you mentioned in your post.

Please hold my hand and tell me what to download and then what to do with it. Would like to make a bootable CD and go from there.

Thx,

Joe