Just surfed in on my new Linux SimplyMepis in Mozilla - groovy!! Yay!!

No more M$!

Never thought I'd get a dial-up modem to work with Linux, but it's all working.

First day of Linux surfing for me today - a VERY important day.

Dominic

Good luck with Linux.
Don't forget to try to use K-Meleon in Linux.
You can download the wine emulator using synaptic
(as root) or as root in the console using

apt-get update

to download the list of available applications from the
repository, and after having downloaded that, as root
in the console type :

apt-get install wine

to install wine.
To become root in the console, you would have to type
either just su, and then the enter key,
or sudo, or sudo su, depending on the distro.
I cannot remember how that is in Mepis at the moment.
You can also install the very useful emelfm file manager.
Typing in the console as root

apt-get emelfm

would install it, if it is available in the repository.
You could start a program in emelfm doubleclicking
on the .exe file and select "execute with", typing wine.
Not all K-Meleon versions are equally flawlessly
to use in Linux. You could start trying an old
KM 0.9.12 and preferably use the "windows only"
browsing option without using layers.
I use wine version 0.9.15 or 0.9.12.
Others may work better or worse for you.
If you should have problems with bad fonts, you
can copy from your Windows the fonts
Verdana, Times, Arial and Courier
to the empty fonts folder in the configuration
file ".wine", which is created in your home directory
when wine is started for the first time, and restart
K-Meleon after doing that.
If you have an installed Mepis,all this has to be done
only once, at the beginning.
Using Linux from a live cd would need a home
directory on a writable medium, as an USB stick,
or a saved configuration somewhere to copy it
back every time.
You will see that it is interesting to discover
new possibilities in Linux, as long as you are not
only wanting to use what you already got prepared
by others.

Fred

Good luck.

Congrats Dominic

Linux is the way to go - throw away the deep need for a firewall and anti-virus as in Window$.

Which browser you using? FireFox? You going for some eyecandy? Can you post some screenshots?
--
[http://encoderX.eu]encoderX[/url]

> "throw away the deep need for a firewall and anti-virus as in Window$"

I'll have you know that I don't use either on my Windows 95 system, and have not been infected.

BenoitRen - I've long since dispensed with both firewall and anti-virus also (98se without IE or OE), and I can't remember the last time my system was infected. Prob those silly folks who created the need for such things aren't interested in our "dinosaur" OSs
Dominic - isn't Linux fun! I've tried several distros, including Mepis, and find Puppy Linux to be my favourite - it just works on my 350MHz P2 64mb laptop like a dream, and it has superb support...almost as good as KM

@Benoit
@Harry

I worked with W95 on a MMX Pentium 166 until 2003, with 24/7 ADSL and fixed IP. The notorious worm-wars of that year hit me like a sledge hammer. I did NOT mess around with dubious e-mail attachments, and did not touch Messenger, Exchange or IE with a ten foot pole.

Welcome to the "drive-by" infection!

With memory maxed out in "dino", my dinosaur machine, I couldn't install a firewall and had no choice but to build myself an up to date system. I DID use open source programs to make an eventual transition to Linux as painless as possible, but in the end I wimped out and bought an XP disk, legal as you please. It has terrible multitasking, compared to my beloved OS/2 of long ago, but is is reasonably stable, like one of those weight lifters' polygonal barbells. No resetting required, but a "heavy mutha", with a BIG footprint in RAM.

I'm thinking of building a new machine, but since I neither want nor need the even more massive "Vista" that MS seems intent on ramming down everyone's throats, methinks it's time for a "paradigm shift". I'm hesitating between SUSE and Ubuntu, perhaps even Fedora Core? Should I prevaricate, weasel out, procrastinate, buy myself time, until the axe inevitably falls? That would make the transition all the more painful. I'll be a two OS man from now on, till the skies clear. Years?

I would propose to make your choice after trying
several different distros as live cds before installing
one of them on your computer.
There are fully functional mini systems from cd as
DSL (DamnSmallLinux), PuppyLinux, or DSL-n
(slightly bigger then DSL, but with a more modern kernel),
the still very small Slax distros from live cd (Slax KillBill with
the Wine emulator for Windows included out of the box,
to enable to use Windows programs in Linux, including
K-Meleon), or complete bigger systems from live cd like
PCLinuxOS, Mepis (enlargable by extra CDs), Ubuntu (which
has a Gnome desktop, while the variation Kubuntu has a
KDE desktop, and the variation Xubuntu has a smaller
Xfce desktop), or even the distros on DVD like
Suse or Mandriva.
All of them are very good and are getting more
and more easy to use for the average Windows user.
You can then decide to keep on using Linux from a CD (which
is an extremely safe way, as long as you keep your harddisks
unmounted most of times, while your on the internet),
or install your selected distro from live cd on harddisk,
to get a system that is much safer then Windows up to
now. and helps respecting your privacy.
It is worth trying Linux as an alternative.

Fred

Fred, emulating K-Meleon in a Linux environment would be defeating the whole purpose of the browser. K-Meleon is designed specifically to take advantage of Windows' native API. Trying to render it in Linux would be slow, buggy and utterly disasterous.

There are several projects similar to K-Meleon for Linux, however -- Epiphinay, for example. It would be more practical to stick with something like this.

I personally like to use K-Meleon on Linux, as well as
I like using other Windows programs there, for example
Irfan View. That is the purpose of the wine emulator.
There is no other browser as easily customizable by
the user as K-Meleon, not even Firefox, where you
depend on extensions made by others, and writing an
own personal extension is far more difficult than
adjust functions in K-Meleon macros. There may be some
flaws, but nothing serious, although it is better to
renounce using layers, which I do anyhow, because
I prefer using windows instead of layers. I use
K-Meleon on Linux all the time, much more than
Firefox, which I can always call up in case it should
once be necessary. In K-Meleon 1.0.2, there is a
little flaw when using the URL bar, but the older
KM 0.9.x versions are still safe for using with a Linux
live cd (especially with harddisks unmounted).
When using an 1.0.x version, you can write the
URL into the "open file" box (shortcut shift + o),
and hit Enter to go to the URL, which is not a
big problem.
No need to forget K-Meleon when using Linux.

Fred

I find that so long as you don't surf too many *cough* inappropriate websites, you have little to nothing to worry about as far as viruses go. I have Avast! AV installed, but it only ever detects anything when I go to cracking websites. As for the firewall, my router pretty well accomplishes that task for me.

Brian

Looks like using the Windows Firewall doesn't even help anymore anyway:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/30/HNwindowsfirewall_1.html

And AV software sometimes doesn't even have all of the new viruses in its definitions, so that doesn't help either. Just browse safely. That's pretty much your only option.

Brian

Your external router should protect you better
than a software firewall.
Such a firewall is only useful to detect a program,
that triesto connect to the internet from inside your
computer,and only if the program tries to do that in a
simple way, without tunneling.
The Windows firewall tries to block incoming attacks
only, and cannot succeed in that task. Other firewalls
succeed neither, but can give at least a hint about
some simple attempts to connect from inside.

Fred

I hope to get a router ASAP. ZoneAlarm meantime has been a favourite of mine ever since I gave up Norton years ago. Norton and ZA had some conflicts back then, so I went to AntiVir Personal. Seemed better than Norton. Later to AVG, which warns us now that it will cost $$ in January. So I'm looking for an anti-virus thing.

But if you read this thread and look for it, you'll see a theme that is emerging all over the internet. How many honest-to-goodness viruses—real viruses, as opposed to dirty registries—have YOU ever caught and killed?

I've been pretty religious about having a firewall and antivrus, plus my spy-killers like Spybot. Spies have been common as can be, and in a lot of M$ programs (such as Genuine Ad). ewido was a good Trojan-finder. But in years and years, I have only ever killed one, or maybe zero (depended which program I looked at) viruses. I guess you could say that was why I took precautions. But now I'm seeing people questioning the concept.

Something like the Simpsons episode regarding precautions taken against dangerous elephants on city sidewalks. —Well, of course there aren't any, and that's why we've been so effective in putting your taxes into patrolling against them.

I was lucky and could avoid viruses, as far as
I am aware of. But I rarely turn on javascript,
which offfers certain possibilities to malware.
I think that an anti-virus program is necessary,
even if new viruses or trojans are hard to stop
as long as they are not recognized and added
to the virus list.

Fred

I too have moved from Windows to Linux.
The only thing I miss is K-Meleon. I have tried to use it in Wine emulation, but it acts to funky for my tastes.
So I now use Opera as my main browser in Linux.

If I have to dual boot back to XP Home partition, I use K-Meleon.

KM needs to be ported for linux. Linux is stuck with the same old tired browsers.

greetz,

i too use linux, but i also use windowz. i use linux for everyday tasks and email and so forth. i use windows for gaiming and using specific programs that have no equals for linux.

i do use k-meleon for my windows xp pro, works wonderfully. on linux i have no choice but use firefox as the others... well suck. i agree there should be a port of sorts of k-meleon. why not use gtk? not gtk2 but just plain ol gtk, its on practically all distros. i know gtk isnt pretty (unless u install a pretty gtk theme), but its fast. a k-meleon port using gtk would be as fast as the windows k-meleon i bet.

anyway, ive noticed a lot of people migrating to linux in the last couple years. ive been using linux for about 5 years now and love it. i only even keep windows as a "backup" when i really need to use some windows only prog with no linux equal. but i do prefer open source programs ;-)

to Mark, and other interested Linux users :

I have made a K-Meleon variation especially to use in Linux
together with the Wine emulator.
It is based on the 0.9 browser structure, but is using the
latest Gecko 1.8.1 for up-dated security.
It works quite well with only a little flaw in the address bar,
where the URL does not always change, after clicking a link.

The version K-Meleon-Linux-usable-1.8.1 has download links
on the page for unofficial K-Meleon versions, here :

http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/UKmeleon

Read also the notes there before using it.

Fred

I have not gone over to Linux/Posix yet.
But I saw an interesting Linux firewall with the operating system built into it at:
w w w . smoothwall.org/

i find xubuntu dapper easy to use, but it doesnt come with mp3 and flash support by default. however theres howtos on how to add this support.