[LUG] Respoinse to my cry for help

All of you who have responded to my earlier posting - thank you very much. It has been most helpful. I will try to e-mail all those that contacted me personally.

Some of you asked about my PC's specs and printers etc. For info it is a self built system AMD 2800+, 512Mb memory, Philips DVD, 2 X 40Gb HDD.

The new monitor is a 19" TFT Widescreen: Printers HP laser 1018 and Brother DC 315cn (Composite - scanner, copier, printer, with card reader). I have not been able to get the new Brother for my colour photo's to work - it just wont install properly and I have had long and expensive phone calls to Brother with no success: I don't know whether this printer will work with Linux as there doesn't seem to be a Linux driver with it. My Broadband modem is a Sagem F@st 800 E3.

There has been a suggestion that my chip or motherboard might be slightly damaged because no-on could understand why my Windows 98se would not work properly and I must have re-installed it some 15 times, 5 times by Fdisking and starting from scratch. I think it is more likely to be Bill Gates fault than my recently new motherboard. I can find no evidence of a virus, anywhere.

I realise that I must decide myself what distro to use and that this is one of the values of Linux but the general consensus seems to be Ubuntu or Kubunto (I understand Gnome or KDE) are best particularly for a beginner. As I have got Fedora core 6 (I understand this is Red Hat - Oh I've just got it Fedora is a hat!) but I may well get the other magazine issue Ubunto.

By the way, I understand most people seem to use Firefox for e-mails in Linux. Can you automatically insert a signature/piece of text as I was unable to find this facility

Thanks again.

Life, love, peace and freedom

Pete (Le M)