Cohen

Custom source code written by Apple (fancy GUI etc) I would expect.

Alpha *is* the kind of computer.

No.

Because Linux is a Unix clone, it's to make crossover from one to the other comfortable and to present a farmilair enviroment. Does it matter? Once you use OS's with this kind of reliability you probably won't even notice any differences in stability.

They're the technical designation for x86 processors. You remember before Pentium came along? Before that Intel's lead processor was the 486 and before that it was the 386 and so on right back to the 8086. The Pentium series are really the same kind of design only they started giving them more PR friendly names like Pentium. 586's are your bog standard Pentium chips (early range speeds between something like 90MHz and 133MHz). 686's are Pentium Pro, II, III and IV (and AMD equivalents). It doesn't really matter which one you use as a i386 distro should run on a 586/686 however it's best to get a distro appropriate to your processor as it will be optimised to run with your CPU. Alpha CPUs are RISC chips so I doubt you'd need that version, see here for more info: http://www.linux-tutorial.info/cgi-bin/display.pl?122&0&0&0&3

'96?! I don't think you'll get a very good impression by using a copy that's almost 8 years old. Why don't you just download the latest Slackware?

It's got nothing to do with Mandrake. /dev/hdc is usually the default designation of your CD-ROM drive. Your discs are messed up, burn another copy.

Maybe his parents have just yanked his internet connection or have taken away his computer as punishment. Either way; daft lad but sorry they came down so hard on you, although that said at least they didn't expel you for good.

I was going to give Fedora a try but I managed to get hold of a copy of SuSE 9.1 Pro, it is very sweet.

That I could not say for sure, but I suspect so.

I alread told you why in my last post:

Since getting a new PC about 2 months ago I've given them both a try in the last few weeks. I would recommend you go with Mandrake. Both the same. Hehe, 3 CDs is a comaprative titch compared to some distros. I've got an old boxed set of Mandrake 8.1 in a cuboard somewhere which is 7 CDs and I'm in the middle of downloading the ISOs for the 7 discs for Debian. Assuming you're talking about the Download edition the third CD is just language support which you could live without.

I didn't say it's not compatible, I said you'll have huge difficulties. The developers at Linspire consider CnR to be the distribution method of Linux apps of tommorow (today! Sorry couldn't resist ) and they make no secret of this. Just have a browse over their site and see what a big deal they make of it, heck just look at this from their FAQs: Aside from not actually answering the question directly (the answer is a 'no' with a 'but', as in it's apps can handle typical Windows extensions, which to be fair most traditional distros of Linux can as well, and it comes bundled with WINE which allows *some* Windows apps to kind of run) they're pushing CnR as if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Linspire is Debian based so you can run Debian packages but it takes a little tweaking. Linspire dosn't come with the complete dependancies and libraries so you're going to have to download and set those up by yourself, something of a daunting task to a Linux newbie fresh from Windows. I'll give them credit, it's good marketing, can't say I approve but it must be effective. The alternative is simply to shell out the £5 a month or whatever it is to subscribe to their software warehouse, you won't learn much about the way Linux works with that but you'll get working software. Just to push the point home, from a Linspire forums pinned "Lindows Do's and Don'ts' thread: (source: http://forum.openlindows.com/viewtopic.php?t=175)

A list of VB Linux clones: http://tools.devchannel.org/devtoolschannel/04/02/02/1932209.shtml Then I feel I should warn you about the difficulties of using any software on Linspire aside from what they provide with CnR. When I gave it a try I had huge problems getting applications like gAIM to install and run, however Linspire will provide a whole host of compatible apps ... if you pay a yearly subscription to their software warehouse. Hope you have more fun then I did with it.

Thanks for your help, I think I can write a decent enough reply now.

Haha, understandable, from the site: This is then followed by a particullarly mammoth list of referances. I would expect the way to debunk such an estimate would be to question that figure about maximum number of planets in the universe and the neccessity of some of those parameters or their accuracy.

He's basing it on this site: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/design_evidences/20020502_life_support_body_prob.shtml?main (you'll need to sign up for free to view the content though here http://www.reasons.org/amember/signup.php) which puts the probability at: Thanks for the link though.

I've gotten into a discussion about this with a friend who is of the opinion that it is impossible for any Earth like planet to exist without divine intervention. Although I am a theist also I do not believe this is the case but when pressed I realised I can't actually back that opinion up (in hindsight it was probably bad scientific form to accept that view without prior evidence, oh well, live and let learn I suppose). Some Googling has found me the opinions of Dr. Charles H. Lineweaver and Professor Barrie Jones but it's all in the form of new reports and articles. Does anybody know where I can find their material online or at least a mathematical overview of their work?

Delphi is object-oriented Pascal which is pretty widely used. You might want to give that a look.

Some versions are specially compiled to run on a PPC processor, for example: http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ To my knowledge there are no PPC ports of Linspire. It's purely x86.