[SC.LUG] Transferring to linux

[ian]

On Sun, 2007-10-07 at 12:04 +0100, Matthew Tolley wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> 
> 
> Now I've transferred completely from MS to Linux (I was dabbling in 
> linux for years but not seriously), I have a few newbie-type queries and 
> would appreciate all help on them...
> 
> (1)     In MS regular Registry cleaning and spyware sweeps were needed 
> to maintain speed and security. What kinds of maintenance should I do 
> regularly on linux, and how often?

There pretty much arent any. peek through /tmp and get rid of junk once
in a while, thats about it.

> (2)     What file extensions in linux are equivalent to program files in 
> MS (such as .exe)? And where will I find them?

There arent and you wont...

> (3)    I've downloaded a firefox plugin as a .bin file - how do I 
> install it?

a) check it isnt packaged by your OS already
b) try executing the .bin file (as root if you want it installed
system-wide). Be sure you trust its origins as always.

> (4)    On other OSs, having more than one AV is a no-no. Is this also 
> the case on Linux? For some reason ClamAV hasn't configured correctly on 
> my machine. How do I fix this? Does anyone use F-Prot or Aegis and how 
> do you rate it?

Havent felt the need for any AV software on my box.

> (5)   I moved to Thunderbird because it seems the most highly 
> recommended email client (David's advocacy of Kmail notwithstanding). 
> Thanks to Robert who sent me the link on deleting duplicate emails (this 
> works really well). My mail headers in Thunderbird have way too much 
> information though (about 20 lines of it) - how can I change this? I 
> only really need the sender's email, addressees, date and subject.

Im pretty sure it has a 'terse headers' option in the menus.

> (6)     I'm using Amarok because it's always so highly recommended in 
> the Linux magazines (seems to keep coming out tops in the reviews) and 
> it supposedly supports flac files, of which I have quite a lot. But when 
> I ask it to play .flac files it says "no available decoder". How do I 
> fix this?

Install flac ?