All that changed in Sept 2004, when a friend gave me SUSE Linux 9.2 – his words were – “SUSE is also called the Mercedes of the Linux world”. SUSE Linux Version 9.2 got me hooked to a point where I was willing to try it out for some time albeit with my XP on a different partition as a standby - 'in case, there was some problem'.

The Polywell Poly ServerStation 890T shows world-class potential as a highly customizable graphics workstation. You can configure it in a zillion different ways, which range from mere overkill to supercomputer. It can run any of a number of operating systems--including Linux, Solaris, SCO Unix, and OS/2--in either single or multiple boot environments.

BeOS 5.0 Pro Version

Contents: 1 Be-OS CD (Bootable).

1 Manual.

System requirements:

Pro Edition: Pentium-class computer; 32MB RAM; dedicated partition or hard

drive of 550MB or more.

Gaim incidentally is a perfect demonstration of open source at its best, originally started by one developer, it has evolved into a project involving several people, and which continues to develop further and further, despite the fact that the original developer has not worked on it for a long time. Gaim is also currently involved in dispute with AOL, the latter has served a notice on the authors for creating a name 'confusingly' similar to AOL's AIM. Catch up on the latest at their site.

Instant Messaging makes staying in touch with friends via the Internet, a much faster and easier process. No longer do you have to patiently read and write e-mails or try and co-ordinate rendezvous timings at chat servers. All you and your friends have to do is to get an instant messaging program. Add your friends to your 'contact list' and whenever one of them logs onto the Internet you can send them messages, files or even play multi-player games. Several Instant Messaging programs exist, with ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger being among the more popular ones.

As the previous Odyssey version, this too came in a 2 CD download. Minimum requirements apart from a Pentium or compatible processor, is at least 32 MB RAM (64MB recommended for graphical installation). Just as before, the installation process is easy with none of the problems faced last time. The key words in the installation being: Simplicity, Flexibility and Control.

There are four ways you can install Linux-Mandrake 8.0 (LM8). (We are not covering upgrades, as we never got around to keeping our buggy 7.2 installation)

One of the most popular uses of the Internet is plain old browsing. The World Wide Web has been around for over a decade now and the number of new Websites continues to grow. The Web has grown from the `text only' days of browsers like lynx to the GUI-based `point and click' browsers like Netscape that display Websites in text, images and often sound.

The package

The package comes with 7 CDs and includes the far more usable single DVD. As always, the DVD installations are very easy and don't require you to be alert to change the CD on time. The excellent technical `handbook' is now, 15 pages richer (though we didn't check to see where). What we did see was that the manual still carries images from the 7.0 release. The usual QuickInstall, configuration and application manuals are available for quick help.

Installation

File Transfer Protocol

Although, over the years, Web browsers have become a popular means of transferring files via the HTTP, FTP still continues to remain a powerful and convenient method. In applications, which require direct computer-to-computer transfer, or when uploading and maintaining a Website, FTP is the best choice.

Pine is a well-known *nix email program which also does Usenet. It is a command-line full-screen application, and runs well in an xterm, too. It's been around since before 1992. Available as both source and binary (for various platforms, including Microsoft Windows), Pine is a well-supported application with a large user base, FAQs, and mailing lists.