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The referenced stats for this article lack two key items: an "other" classification, and and explanation of how OS is being identified. A definition of the sample would also be useful, as browser/platform distribution can vary quite strongly across websites.

A competing set of web client statistics shows Linux at 1.77% of all clients, and (if you do the math) 2.16% "other" or unclassified clients. Missing, if you've any experience running yoru own website, are the various crawler and spider types which can account for a significant volume of traffic.

Regardless, it would appear that actual Linux web client share is somewhere in the 1% - 4% range. Given 1.26 billion people on the Internet, I'd estimate 12.6 - 50.4 million Linux users. More or less (or most or cat or dog....).

Karsten M. Self

Really? I always thought that DJB never clearly attached any license to his work, but told people they were brainwashed for thinking they even needed one, which started all the confusion in the first place...

That was my impression also. My first thought on reading this summary was that Bernstein making a verbal announcement doesn't really mean all that much, since -- if I understand the situation correctly -- part of the trouble has been his reluctance to say things in writing in the code distribution.

If you folks are coming into this story in the middle, djb is probably best known as the author of "qmail" (that's a "Q" not a "G"), which was once upon a time one of the few alternates to "sendmail" (these days, there's "postfix" and "exim" and probably some others).

Among other quirks, licensing of "qmail" has always been a sticky issue. I suggest reading Rick Moen's take on this subject:

And before anyone else picks me up on "accidently", I refer you to Moen's Law of Corrections.

One virus. Two viruses.

The urge to say virii, is hypercorrection. Which is to say... wrong.

But don't take my word for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/plural-of-virus.html

So unless you are trying to be cute, the plural of virus is viruses.

And know you know!

This is when a stupid person, feeling personally hurt by learning, will whine about language changing over time.

Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing, but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie.

this should be clear enough. http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

Hey CryBaby,

I just came across this ;-)

This is another very stupid guy like me that doesn't use debuggers. When he does use them, it resembles quite strangely the usage I do when I DO use debuggers.

Have a nice one ;-)

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/linus-im-a-bastar d-speech.html

Try looking at the copyright on djbdns. None, I repeat *none*, of Dan Bernstein's technically excellent solutions have propagated to broad use because of his extremely poor documentation, installation instructions, violations of the UNIX FileSystem Hierarchy, unwillingness to allow others to fork his code even for ease of packaging reasons, confusing licensing, etc.

The functionality of clever tools like QMail and djbdns and daemontools has thus wound up sidelined and ignored by mainline developers. There are numerous lengthy and well-frounded rants on this, such as http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=war ez#djb. And like the absurd licensing conditions of Pine and the University of Washington wu-imapd, the refusal to accept input or insights from others or cooperate with its packaging for more stable configurations has led to their being discarded from most distributions.

As I pointed out here, you may find a resistance/weight training program also helps markedly. Dr. Bob Arnot's Guide to Turning Back the Clock is one of several fitness books aimed at the 30-70+ crowd which seems to do a really good job of laying out what works and how to do it. You might also want to start tracking your body fat percentage, caliper and tape-measure methods you can do yourself (just don't cheat the measurements).

Karsten M. Self (http://www.linuxmafia.com/~karsten

I'm down 35 pounds since Dec 2006 as a mix of diet and exercise.

Dump sugars and simple starches. Get plenty of fiber and moderate amounts of complex carbs. Fats are reasonably OK (and are insulin-neutral), but stick to poly- and mono-unsaturated where possible.

Add to that: significant protein. 0.7 - 0.9 gm per pound of lean body weight (the amount depends on your activity level, Google for references and some DIY body fat estimation methods).

As TFA indicates, cardio is good, and I've stepped up my workout with 2-3 additional days of long, moderately intense activity. The calorie burn is useful, but there are other benefits of cardio (also covered in TFA) which I appreciate (keeps me sane, much better general cardiovascular fitness).

Another key for me was weight/resistance training. In particular, if you want to get your ass into shape, get your ass into shape: glutes, hams, quads. Adding lean muscle mass both changes your body composition in general, and changes metabolism. Working major muscle groups, above plus the major back muscles (lats, traps, rhomboids, delts), and chest (pecs), as well as your core stabilizers (abs, spinal erectors (lower back) mostly as a guard against back pain/injury, will give you huge benefits. That's 4-5 strength exercises, 2-3 times a week (I'm doing more exercises, 2x week), which will make a dramatic change.

A book I'd highly recommend is Dr. Bob Arnot's Guide to Turning Back the Clock (1996). I actually ran across that after about five months on my routine, and found that the guidelines generally agreed with my own experiences, with some pointers which I've incorporated for better effect. There are numerous other good guides to specific aspects of the program (diet, exercise, cardio, weighs), as well as more recent materials than Arnot's, though his information appears to be aging quite well (as is Dr. Bob). Variants of the basic diet range from the full Atkins regime (carbs: bad, meats: good, fats: good) to Ornish (sugars: bad, meat: bad, protein: good, complex carbs: good). The truth is probably somewhere between. Gina Kolata (NY Times health reporter) has a bood out that seems to be an omnibus review of many of these methods, was reviewing it briefly yesterday.

--
Karsten M. Self http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten

Xen is one of several virtualization technologies available for running Linux and Windows systems (others include VMWare, Qemu, KVM (kernel virtual machines), UML, and Parallels). Xen's primary benefit is the ability to run as a "hypervisor", such that the guest OS instances are "paravirtualized". While this requires a modified OS kernel, the performance overhead is very small (2-4%). Disclaimer: I worked for XenSource running performance benchmarking tests 2005-2006.

The other mode for running Xen guests, with qualifying "VT" hardware from Intel or AMD, is called "full virtualization", and uses on-chip support to allow running virtualized OSs with an unmodified kernel. The benefit is easier virtualization of more operating systems, the downside is a greater performance hit than paravirtualization. Exactly how much I can't say as I wasn't part of this testing, but it seems to be roughly the 30% or so you'd see with VMWare.

There are other downsides of virtualization, particularly concerning high-speed video and audio, though these are being addressed. The primary market is in server farms where workloads can be allocated and dynamically adjusted among physical resources, but it's still something you might keep in mind.

Karsten M. Self

the account currently in use will ALWAYS be more likely to be compremised than one not in use

There is an argument that bruteforcing a random account is harder because you need to figure out both username and password. For more discussion see here

Obviously this ignores the insane exception that is Linspire.

You're not keeping up to date with you distro news, are you? That's been debunked in 2005.

The plural of virus is viruses. The following link has a thorough explanation of the word's Latin roots.

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.ht ml

"Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing[2], but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie."

from http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.ht ml

Reveal Codes

WordPerfect on Linux

I'm pretty sure an XP install disc with SP2 slipstreamed will have SATA support,

I'd say that post wasn't very eloquent but it's true. If you're not smart enough to realize that modern Unices are more secure by design you haven't actually looked into things. They're not optimal(a capability system would be better) but they're better than that of any Microsoft solution. Nimda attacked Microsoft Windows servers. There is no equivalent to Nimda for Apache/Unix servers even though Apache/Unix servers are more common than Windows servers.

A lot of people have tried this since the "Windows Refund Day" back in 1999. http://linuxmafia.com/refund/ Not many have been successful.

When are you nitwits going to get it through your head that virii and worms do not require elevation of privilege to spread or do damage?

When are you nitwits going to get it through your head that there's no such word as "virii"?

http://www.techarp.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bog no=313 and http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html as well as http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-0 15988.htm has some more info.

Because there's a chance some other clown gets your blowback if you accidentally give information valid for someone else, making this approach roughly as harmful, if not more harmful than, challenge-response. If you're going to give bad information, give valid information for someone you don't like.

Your phone number should start with "1" (phone numbers in the US never start with "0" or "1")

Oh, good, someone in another area code gets your telemarketing calls. I'm sure they love you for that.

If you're a Blues Brothers fan, like I am, your address should be "1060 West Addison."
City, State and Zip should never match (e.g Dallas, AZ, 90210)

Oh, good, so if 1060 W Addison, 90210 exists, they'll get your snail-spam.

According to an old email from Ts'o, not only they suggest to run XFS with an UPS but SGI hardware was modified to mitigate damages in case of black-out using big capacitors and, at kernel level, was added a power-fail interrupt to Irix. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Filesystems/reiserfs.htm l

Actually, the zero-filled files is a misfeature of XFS. Having a UPS will not save you. There are two XFS problems:

  1. Power loss can destroy your filesystem. Solution: do not use XFS or ReiserFS without a UPS.
  2. An unclean shutdown can leave you with zero-filled files. AFAIK this is a design flaw in XFS or, depending how you look at it, a tradeoff of data integrity for performance. If you don't like the tradeoff then your only choice is to use another filesystem.

Source: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Filesystems/reiserfs.htm l

The closing insult is genius, thanks for the display of your intellect.

As for your point, yes, forks happen. MIT/BSD allows for forks, and the forker can choose to make the fork unhealable (by many methods, one of which is not distributing the source). GPL also allows for forks, but it ensures that all forks can be healed - the fork and the original can be merged later because the licence can never become incompatible.

Here's an excellent essay on the topic: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/forkin g.html

The superiority of the GPL approach (copyleft) can also be seen by the number of contributors to GNU/Linux compared to the number of contributors to the free BSDs. Copyleft creates a level playing field, and more agree to play.

The challenge is to find what I'd term an 'enlightened' leader. To define the term, it's a leader who him/herself is as ego-free as you can get it, sets achievable aims and who can balance out discussions in a fair but focused and constructive way. I certainly class Linus Torvalds and Mark Shuttleworth in that category, Linus by reputation and what he does, and Mark because I know him (and again, by what he has done and is doing).

Linus is "as ego-free as you can get"? He can "can balance out discussions in a fair but focused and constructive way"? Are you joking? He calls people he disagrees with idiots . He's very stubborn on some issues. And don't forget how he attacked Andrew Tridgel for having the audacity to let developers access their metadata in Bitkeeper.

BTW, 'enlightened' does not mean 'perfect' - we're all human :-).

Ha, I see you anticipated this response, but come on, Linus acts like a typical egotistical developer. He's technically competent and keeps the trains running on time, but I wouldn't call him "enlightened".

The best environment in Linux - as with on any platform - is a text editor and a solid mind that thinks the problems through before typing. IDEs inhibit that thought process.

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Mail/challenge-response. html

Help is all around!

Lookup the SATA setting in BIOS. The A8V model has SATA settings that can be RAID or AHCI setting which will let OS to detect SATA drive as IDE drive.

ftp://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket939/A8V-M X/e2337_a8v-mx.pdf

Look at the 2-26 or page 68 where it shows you how to set the SATA mode as AHCI. This is the only work-around I've found so far.

http://www.intel.com/technology/serialata/ahci.htm
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

This should be suffice to gather enough info on the workaround. I had a bitching time setting up the SATA on mobo (although it wasn't A8V-MX but with same chipset and bios) until I found out my mobo accepts AHCI standard for SATA controller.

Have a look at Rick Moen's essay Fear of forking to see in more detail what causes successful forking.

No. Any tool that requires the Linux kernel and linux kernel code to run is to GPL.

Same goes with Autoconf. Does your project use and link against Autoconf during run time? If not then it doesn't need to be GPL'd.

With a kernel driver when your running this it is running AS PART of the kernel. It's kernel-derived.

As a End user you don't have to give a shit. You can pile millions of lines of Windows code into the kernel and nobody cares as far as the GPL goes. GPL only applies to you when you distribute software.

This is the ENTIRE POINT of the GPL vs LGPL. Why else would there be a point to making 2 licenses?

If you don't beleive me, then you can talk to This fellow about it.
http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2005-Octob er/011317.html


---- [1] Witness Torvalds's meandering (if consistently imperious) policy,
---- which I've tracked here: "Proprietary Kernel Modules" on
---- http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Kernel/

I, and others who hold copyrights on portions of the kernel are saying
very clear things about this now, "proprietary kernel modules are
illegal." It's pretty simple. Lots of major companies agree with us
too, along with their legal departments, so we aren't just pissing in
the wind here.

Oh, and at least one major distro has been served with legal papers due
to them shipping closed source kernel drivers, and more are on the way.
That's the direction some developers are taking. Others, myself
included, as taking the technical way and just making it so damn hard to
write and ship a closed kernel module, that they will just give up
eventually. Combine that with the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() stuff in the
kernel, and I give it about 1-2 more years before it's just technically
impossible to write such a module.

thanks,

greg k-h

For those of us running Linux or *BSD systems, having the package manager actually, um, manage packages is a major win. And every last damned exception to the rule is one that an admin should make very, very, very grudgingly.

Why? Let me count the ways:

1. It's a package you have to remember to update.
2. It's a package you have to remember (and initially discover) the source of.
3. It's a package you have to remember the installation and update procedures for.
4. It's a pacage your package manager isn't automatically tracking updates and security issues for.
5. It's a package on which you're relying on some idiot third-party package installer developer to write an install routine that 1). works, 2). doesn't suck, 3). doesn't break things, and 4). accomodates the preferred local SOP for managing third-party software. Not to mention 5). all the other issues that third-party installers present. There was a great interview a couple years ago on Sourceforge between Roblimo and an Installshield droid pimping his tools for Linux. To a one, the comments read "keep your crap full-screen interactive installer off my Linux box". Either private email or public followup from Roblimo explained that his style was to just let the guy talk and let the article speak for itself, comments included.
6. Third party installers very nearly always suck. Sun's, last I checked, was a self-extracting shell archive of some description, in an encoded form that basically meant you couldn't readilly even performa a cursory scan of the installer script to see what the hell it was doing. I run shit like that only under extreme duress, and not at all if possible. Sun's not alone in this. Oracle's Java-based Linux installers sucked (and possibly still do, haven't touched 'em since 2000). IBM's DB2 Linux installer sucked. SAS's installers sucked. Oddly enough, you'll find little or none of such software on my systems, in large part because the functionality is available in DFSG / OSI Open Source / FSF Free Software licensed, managed, packages. Go figure.
7. Third party installers very nearly always have one or more noninteractive components. Meaning that automated, unattended updates and installs require either script thuggery or are impossible. Chalk up another strike against maintainability.
8. Uninstallation, removal, and cleanup are often afterthoughts if addressed at all. The first rule of sorcerers apprenticeship is: learn how to make it stop, turn it off, and/or get rid of it, before you start.
9. Systems which don't offer centrally managed, policy-driven, trusted package management are both security and management problems waiting to happen. This is one of the major disadvantages of Microsoft's platforms, and is among the concerns I've got running Apple's Mac OS X. More discussion of this in an spyware and adware, touching on culture and philosophy.

All these are reasons why on a typical Debian box of mine, with 1500 - 2500 packages installed, the third-party (let alone proprietary) packages are virtually always limited to a mere handful, often of the Skil Saw variety (short a few fingers).

The interactions between licensing, community, package management, trust, security, and maintainability are deep, difficult to grok, and profound. But they matter very significantly, and a number of us are very much aware both of this fact and for the reasons why.

All that said: I have installed Sun's Java packages. Each time I have to look up the currently preferred system, track down the correct download files on Sun's site (no mean feat of itself), download, unpack, assess scripts and READMEs, try to figure out where the damned thing will go, and whether or not I can get rid of it. Then I try to run the installer and pray I haven't just shot myself in the foot.

By contrast, managed software is a matter of: search for it (apt-cache search), view th

When AMD has a problem, it only affects 3000 or so processors and causes minor corruption when a million-line-long piece of code is called without being stopped at any time. When Intel has a problem it affects millions of processors and crashes your computer when a single 32-bit command is called. I know whom I'll be buying from.

Or perhaps it's that AMD has superior products all-around--there has never been an AMD analogue to the f00f bug, and they also don't overheat as much, leading to a more reliable product. Plus they're cheaper.

Congratulations, you just fell off Pons Asinorum, the bridge of fools

Repeat after me: "The plural of 'virus' is 'viruses'."

The classic explanation:

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.ht ml

As I'm sure you know Rick Moen has an informative text on this. IMO you'd have to be insane not to have a license on software you are using for SMTP/DNS (Ie. speaking directly with the outside world).

But, hey, you're free to be insane. Just don't act surprised when people don't want to join you for a glass of kool-aid.

If you don't live in a country where it is legal to use patented/whatever codecs without paying royalties, you can of course still do it at your own risk, which is exactly what you did by doing it in Gentoo, so I fail to see the problem.

FWIW, Debian does include mp3 decoder software (i.e., software that can decode mp3 files to listen to) by default. It takes ca. 5 seconds to know this by googling for debian AND mp3 AND patent AND policy, which brings up this thread as the first link.
This might be too much for a newbie, but you don't qualify because you installed Gentoo. OTOH, a newbie wouldn't even have to google for it, because it works out of the box.

If you mean mp3 encoders (software to produce mp3 files), you are right that they aren't included. It takes 0.29 secs (according to Google) to look for debian AND mp3 AND encoder, which will give you lots of info and debs to download.

I still don't see how you can add MP3 support to KDE when the support has to be compiled into the KDE apps that use it

The wonders of modern software engineering! Did you ever recompile Windows Media Player because you added codecs for ogg, DivX and the 1,000,000 other file formats it can't play out of the box? Thought so.
See, while support might have to be compiled in, to my knowledge all Debian packages do and will gracefully ignore it if the mp3 library is not present. This is true for all proprietary codecs that I am aware of.

If you google for Debian AND codecs or Debian AND "unofficial repository" or Debian AND decss, or whatever, you will see many hits to repositories that you can simply add to /etc/apt/sources list (you can also use, e.g., the newbie-friendly Synaptic). Usually the google hits will include the repository of Christian Marillat or, for Ubuntu, of the Penguin Liberation Front, who provide packages for users who do not live in legally challenged countries. Then just install what you need with Synaptic or apt-get.

If you live in such a country, you can still run a Debian-based distro, Linspire, which will give you mp3 and video codecs as well as a DVD player, all completely legal even in the US, for a small fee. (There is talk about providing Linspire's Click 'n' Run Warehouse for Ubuntu users too). (Don't believe the myth that Linspire runs everything as root, it is not true). Anyway, Xandros gives you nearly the same (sans CSS'ed DVD IIRC)

"And I, for one, am not going to give up my freedoms, even for "ease of use" and other minor benefits."

Those benefits help the vast majority of computer users. You do realize you represent the vast minority here, right? Most people that own a computer couldn't care less about being able to hack Windows to run on the Mac they just bought so they didn't have to run Windows on it. They don't want to hack EFI, they couldn't tell you what Linux is, and quite frankly are scared to "tool around" anyway, even in the good, inquisitive way so that they at least learn a little about their machine.

They want ease of use, seamless integration with the other apps they use, less viruses, spyware, adware, and complete, one-stop support for hardware and software used, a place to go when you are having issues (to talk to someone... face to face... for free quick fixes, free usage classes, and one-on-one consultation if wanted). Apple has those things. All under one roof which matters a great deal to the vast majority.

I'm sorry, but in the end DRM won't matter enough.

"...virii/trojans/worms."

virii is not a recognized use, and if you can't get that through your brain, it certianly shouldn't be giving information about Viruses/trojans/worms in general. Even your link uses the correct term.

Besides this, the specific definintion no longer matters outside of the AV industry. Users don't care, they just want it fixed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virii

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.ht ml

http://foldoc.org/?viruses

Seen at:http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Legacy_Microsoft/alta ir-basic.html

From rick Sat Jun 1 23:01:17 2002
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 23:01:17 -0700
To: Peter Belew (peterbe@sonic.net)
Cc: jtsmoore@pacificnet.net, SlugLug (sluglug@sluglug.ucsc.edu)
Subject: Re: [SlugLUG] RevolutionOS showing
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27

deleted.......

But rather than dwell on all that, I thought I'd address this bit about Bill Gates's "Open Letter to Hobbyists",[1] which Peter Belew dragged into the discussion.

Peter, I happen to be one of the old-timers, too, and my memory is perhaps a little better than yours. The letter was not to the Homebrew Computer Club (of which I was a member at the time), but rather to a the MITS Altair Users' Newsletter, in New Mexico. David Bunnell was then newsletter editor, and he lobbed a copy to us at the Homebrew club, among other people. Which is how we got it. (And this was in early 1976, not 1977.)

The letter caused quite a flap. For one thing, this complaint from the General Partner of "Micro-Soft" over in Albuquerque wasn't entirely honest. The software in question had been created on a taxpayer-subsidised PDP-10 (running an 8080 emulator) at Harvard, and also there was very strong, reasonable suspicion that Gates, Allen, and Davidoff had "borrowed" from several other people's BASIC inplementations without their authors' permission.

Also, and less relevantly, Micro-Soft was already getting a reputation for questionable business deals: If you were buying MITS dodgy boards, Micro-Soft's Altair BASIC was $150. If not, the same product was $500, which was a hell of lot in those days. Which was not a good reason to misappropriate it, although the questionable ancestry of Micro-Soft's 4kB interpreter arguably was.

deleted.........

[1] Readable at http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Legacy_Microsoft/open-le tter-to-hobbyists.html, among other places.

[2] Nitpickers have noted that the concept was not unknown in parts of the mainframe world. But it was an unwelcome surprise to microcomputerists.

Seen at:http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Legacy_Microsoft/alta ir-basic.html

From rick Sat Jun 1 23:01:17 2002
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 23:01:17 -0700
To: Peter Belew (peterbe@sonic.net)
Cc: jtsmoore@pacificnet.net, SlugLug (sluglug@sluglug.ucsc.edu)
Subject: Re: [SlugLUG] RevolutionOS showing
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27

deleted.......

But rather than dwell on all that, I thought I'd address this bit about Bill Gates's "Open Letter to Hobbyists",[1] which Peter Belew dragged into the discussion.

Peter, I happen to be one of the old-timers, too, and my memory is perhaps a little better than yours. The letter was not to the Homebrew Computer Club (of which I was a member at the time), but rather to a the MITS Altair Users' Newsletter, in New Mexico. David Bunnell was then newsletter editor, and he lobbed a copy to us at the Homebrew club, among other people. Which is how we got it. (And this was in early 1976, not 1977.)

The letter caused quite a flap. For one thing, this complaint from the General Partner of "Micro-Soft" over in Albuquerque wasn't entirely honest. The software in question had been created on a taxpayer-subsidised PDP-10 (running an 8080 emulator) at Harvard, and also there was very strong, reasonable suspicion that Gates, Allen, and Davidoff had "borrowed" from several other people's BASIC inplementations without their authors' permission.

Also, and less relevantly, Micro-Soft was already getting a reputation for questionable business deals: If you were buying MITS dodgy boards, Micro-Soft's Altair BASIC was $150. If not, the same product was $500, which was a hell of lot in those days. Which was not a good reason to misappropriate it, although the questionable ancestry of Micro-Soft's 4kB interpreter arguably was.

deleted.........

[1] Readable at http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Legacy_Microsoft/open-le tter-to-hobbyists.html, among other places.

[2] Nitpickers have noted that the concept was not unknown in parts of the mainframe world. But it was an unwelcome surprise to microcomputerists.

Wordperfect has been ported to Linux on a few occasions before. There's plenty of information about it on the web. I don't think it's available in many stores as of late, but I think I have a copy around somewhere, and I know a local shop here in MN that still has a new-in-box copy of it. I think you can probably find it on eBay at some point.

click me

but your friend would download viruses and their ilk from the websites you are sending him to. virus corrupts the floppy and you install a trojan when you access the disk. this doesn't care what kind of connection you have, it contacts the creator who installs all you can eat malware.

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/package-database- rebuild.html

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/exampl es/debian-package-database-rebuild

The word is viruses . Stop trying to look intellectual. It's not working.