Reccomend me some (free) good anti-virus software

[thelordharry]

Ah, OK. Thanks.

I'm happy enough running Linux most of the time; though there are a few annoying nits I can work around them. The desktop is fast and more powerful than the Windows desktop - but those nits and bugs are enough that many ordinary users would get a bit frustrated at times.

No big fat bloated GUI to slow things down

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Oh, there's a GUI (for the desktop distros); in fact there are several to choose from. I'm using KDE 4.2; it's this I'm describing as "fast and more powerful than the Windows desktop." There is no GUI for the server versions of Linux I know (they don't need 'em!). The file manager ("Dolphin") is a thing of beauty, far ahead of the versions of Windows Explorer I've seen. Firefox is my browser.

Though once I did (while wiping off my keyboard) manage to inadvertently enter the command to leave the GUI environment and enter the world of pure, hardcore Linux. I immediately rebooted to get back to the beautiful GUI.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

In my "root" folder:

[Sionnach Glic]

Am I reading that wrong, or did you have nineteen programs running when you took that pic?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Am I reading that wrong, or did you have nineteen programs running when you took that pic?

6 programs, 19 windows, sure. I have modern hardware and this OS seems to go on forever without ever slowing down.

Amarok is my music player, Dolphin is just the file manager. The 10 or so Firefox windows are really the biggest drag on memory but I still have space in there.

[Sionnach Glic]

How could you possibly need that many windows open at once? I usualy only have a maximum of two, one for whatever I'm doing at that moment and one for playing music.

[thelordharry]

Oh, there's a GUI (for the desktop distros); in fact there are several to choose from. I'm using KDE 4.2; it's this I'm describing as "fast and more powerful than the Windows desktop." There is no GUI for the server versions of Linux I know (they don't need 'em!). The file manager ("Dolphin") is a thing of beauty, far ahead of the versions of Windows Explorer I've seen. Firefox is my browser.

Though once I did (while wiping off my keyboard) manage to inadvertently enter the command to leave the GUI environment and enter the world of pure, hardcore Linux. I immediately rebooted to get back to the beautiful GUI.

Ha Ha, yes, a GUI is a must. I meant that the GUI is nowhere near as fat and bloated as a Windows interface, that in my opinion was designed for the likes of my parents who require the abject simplist (but most resource intensive) form of interaction, along with their 'hunt and peck' typing skills

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Oh, right.

However, I am just old enough to remember the days of DOS when the computer booted into the command line interface and Windows was more or less run "on top of" DOS. My first computer was an old 486, maybe a 386 even, and my first printer was a dot matrix printer with an ink ribbon rather than an ink cartridge. I hadn't heard of these "interwebs" then so I just used it to write my reports and play TETRIS; I didn't have my own TV yet then and I spend the waking hours I wasn't in school or playing Tetris reading.

[thelordharry]

God yeah, the heady days of Windows 3.1. A system crash for every half hour that passed Previous versions of Windows before this one were a bit before my professional time but I remember the excitement of 3.1 being a quantum leap on anything else that came before it....and it shipped with 'minesweeper' as well!!!!