[Malvern] Is there life in BT Broadband?

[Geoff Bagley]

> I'll need to sign up with BT Broadband, otherwise the engineer is unlikely
> to call for free.

I was in that position too,  and resented it a little at the time.

I gave up my Demon and  UKLINUX accounts,  and went for btbroadband.

Later they unilaterally changed it to "btinternet.com"  when they handed all 
the domestic stuff over to "Yahoo".    Looking back,  I cannot complain.  

BT (or is it Yahoo ?)  do a decent job of spam and virus filtering  on their 
web-mail site.   You can look at their site and decide what's desirable (and 
safe) to down load,  or just take the lot.

My next line of defence is my Netgear Ethernet Router, which also has a 
firewall.

I am generally happy with BT-Yahoo, even though the name "Yahoo" gets up my 
nose a bit.  Availability is good,  and they are helpful.

The ADSL modem supplied by BT is not Linux friendly.  I would suggest getting 
your own.

It is easy to get Windows up and running,  but I have since then been able to 
use Debian GNU/Linux almost exclusively.  I still have dual boot,  but rarely 
use it.

>
> Are there any issues over online gaming which need thinking through?
>

Don't know.  Don't do games.

> 
>   GNOME only (no KDE). Don't know why, but GNOME apps tend to feel nicer.
>

They both work on both.   I usually boot up on Gnome., and change to KDE.
I like the KDE console  best for  CLI hacking.
I use Gnumeric on KDE.  It accepts Excel files.   Abiword is nice too.

>   Easy update / uninstall.
That's Debian -  Use apt-get.

> Has anybody got a copy of Debian with the 1.0 installer they would be
> willing to burn to CD, for a small compensation?

I have the Debian 3.0 Woody disks you can have.  Get a basic dual-boot system 
working first.  Once you are on broadband you can download all the latest and 
best.  It is useful to have a browser running on Windows (Try Mozilla 
Firefox) so that you can collect Linux knowledge.

There is quite a lot of Debian GNU/Linux experience in this local  LUG.

Cheers,

Geoff.