Formatting HDD

[Tim]

On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 19:10 +0100, horse wrote:
> I am fed up with internet malware and have been told that a
> Linux-based program gets little or none.

Yes, it's *mostly* water off a duck's back to it.  There is some risk,
more so if you run servers to the WWW.  The hint is don't be complacent.

Some will say that it won't be a drop-in replacement for Windows, and I
agree.  Though I find that I can do just about anything I want on one or
the other, with more of a change in mindset than in abilities.  And, of
course, it's not a drop-in replacment for all the maintenance woes of
Windows.

> I loaded the complete DVD of Fedora Core 4 on my old Fujitsu laptop.
> It went smoothly. The HDD is 10Gb and FC4 loaded about 5Gb!

Yes, with Linux you get an OS, a plethora of applications, and the
kitchen sink.  You can leave the extra stuff there, or remove it now
(piece by piece), or re-install with different options.

> 1. How do I format the HDD so I can start with a fresh and minimal
> installation.

Pretty much the same way you installed it the first time around.  Just
pick different options.

> 2. I only want to access the internet, use Fedora's version of Outlook
> as an email client, use Fedora's 'Word' program, and use Adobe Reader.

Well, there's Evolution which mimicks Outlook quite a lot.
OpenOffice.org is the touted Office replacement.  If you just want a
word processor there's a few simpler, and smaller things on offer
(AbiWord is one, KDE has it's own - which I don't recall the name,
because I don't use KDE, and there's more).  And there's Evince or XPDF
for reading PDF files without all the bloat and security issues of Adobe
reader.  Though you can get a Linux version of Adobe from Adobe.  If you
mean something for reading PDF eBooks rather than just PDF files, I'm
not familiar with what's on offer.  Best of all, all of them are free,
legally free.  All it costs you is your time and effort to get them.

However, the kitchen-sink mentality, and package interdepency issues,
does make it hard to really do minimal installations.  I have a fairly
minimal system, with a bit more installed than you've mentioned, but I
don't put the lot on.

-- 
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