Well I've finally bitten the bullet. I'm fed up with the laptop being killed by iTunes so have gone for a new one*. My last foray into Linux was short lived thanks to not being able to get full hardware support, but having read so much on here re ubuntu I thought I'd give that a go instead of a new version of windows.
Installed fine last night, a much better experience than last time
It's just like Windows now, chuck in CD, provide basic computer name details etc and watch it do itself. No more hours of wading through text config files. Brilliant.
Once up and running I got the wireless working (wasn't expecting to manage that!) and then downloaded the 270 security patches**. I did notice when I opened the additional bit of the installer that some of the words in the scrolling log included "... fail", is this something to worry about? How can I confirm that the patches are installed and working?
I've had a wade around the box and am pleased with the interface. Pretty much like windows and really easy to navigate, hardest thing at the moment for me is to remember that [ctrl]-r is refresh, not F5 as I've been used to.
Firefox seems to run ok, albeit a bit clunky and slow. I've set a location in the date/time window and it now shows me my weather. I've configured the email application and it's downloaded the last 7 days of mail that I retain on my webserver. I've noticed a bittorrent client went on as default so I've uninstalled it as I don't want my bandwidth used by others sharing files.
But what next? All I usually use a PC for nowadays is web surfing and emails. Therefore I should be ok, but I feel dirty and unprotected.
How can I tell what info this box is sending back to ubuntu/the web?
How can I confirm the incoming pipes the bitorrent application opened have been closed again? How can I confirm there are no other loopholes in?
What should I do about a firewall and AV?
What other security settings should I be looking at?
What do I do next?
Email: can you advise me the best solution to my current conundrum?
I have many different email addresses, most of which are forwarders, and ultimately all end up in the same mailbox. Using POP3 I read these in my mail client (Outlook Express at work, Outlook on the old laptop, Eudora on the ubuntu machine). I have to have it as POP3 as that is the only channel open to get personal mails into the work environment where I read them all the time, smtp and imap is blocked (if I have to send an urgent mail out I can use the webmail interface).
When the mail arrives I use the mail rules on either the addressee, subject line, or other criteria to move the mail into the relevant "inbox-xxxxxxxx" folder. This then enables me to read them sensibly as they're all grouped together logically. The eudora rules don't seem to be complex enough to duplicate this.
Also, can I bring together my outlook express archives (going back a long way), outlook archives, and then the new eudora mails so I have all my old mails in one place again?
Many thanks in advance.
* which means Mrs Nutty will use her work machine for everything other than iTunes as she can't stand how slow our machine works, and I won't be using it at all. An entire WinXP box sitting there just to run one intermittently used application
** which included the mandetory reboot. These people that say
