Couple questions

[Blue_Gundam2002]

I'm about to install Mandrake or Fedora on my laptop. But I have a few questions to ask first.
1) Can Mandrake or Fedora safely read, wright, or move files around on an NTFS partition over a network?
2)Will my Linksys wireless PC card work?
3)Can't remember what the third one was.:)

[bailey]

not sure about moving files around on the ntfs system yet,

but I know there is something that linus does not support and can't remember what it is.
maybe its wireless ?

I'm still working on my linux box seeing the other system on my lan. and visa=versa

[mikezel]

I dabbled around in Fedora a few months ago, and from what I read, NTFS write support is risky. You should read up on that more, but I didn't risk it.
As for your wireless, i think it could work, the best way to tell is to search google for a hardware compatability list (hcl) for whatever distro you're using. I know that it took me forever to get the integrated lan on my p4p800 to work, it turned out that i needed to install a driver for a totally different card.
hope that helps
mike

[Blue_Gundam2002]

What about reading from NTFS?

[bailey]

I belive that you need something like samba installed for it to work.
just google it and read if it will answere your questions

[Dswissmiss]

You don't need samba to read from ntfs, just change your fstab file... I can lead you in the right direction if you need any help.

[Blue_Gundam2002]

I just installed Fedora, and remembered my 3rd question. Does anyone know a program that will let me download my hotmail e-mail? I use hotmail popper for windows but there isn't a linux version.

[XpXJ19]

As long as you know the smtp and pop3 settings for Hotmail you should be able to setup any e-mail program to send and recieve e-mail.

[Blue_Gundam2002]

Only outlook can download hotmail. The program Hotmail Popper trickes hotmail into thinking your useing outlook.

[Dswissmiss]

I've read about a lot of people being able to do it with this link http://hotwayd.sourceforge.net/ , although I've never read it.

[Xayd]

Write support for NTFS is supposedly stable in kernel 2.6.xx.

I haven't tried it thoroughly, but I did try it a few days back with kernel 2.6.6 and it worked for the few things I moved around (didn't hose my Windows machine, files showed up where they were supposed to with correct dates, etc.).

google "kernel how-to" and you'll turn up plenty.

[XpXJ19]

A while back when I was using Mandrake Linux 9.1 I could read the NTFS windows partition on my hard drive. I'm not sure which kernel that was and I haven't read anything yet about NTFS writing, but reading definitely works without damage.

[LocoCoyote]

Read support for NTFS is good in all distros I have played with (most of the major ones). Write support...I have heard both that it is unstable and that it is fully supported. I don't know, not having tried it myself.
Your linksys wireless (I am assuming a PC Card) should work. I am currently using one on my HP omnibook and aside from some issues it seems to work fine.
I did have to disable (read not load at boot time) my onboard ethernet card to get the wirelllless to work. The problem was that my system kept defaulting to the onboard ethernet and ignored the wireless. There is no doubt a better fix for this, but I am laking the time right now to pursue it.

[Xayd]

alias (module for wireless nic) eth0 in modules.conf

If your distro is using hotplug to load modules automatically (there will be an /etc/hotplug directory if so), go in there and add the module name for the one you don't want to use to the blacklist file.

If you wanna use both, just add an alias in modules.conf for the on-board nic to be eth1 (number instead of number one).

[Blue_Gundam2002]

I've figured out how to access my shared drive on my file server. It's NTFS, is it safe to move the files around since its over a network?

[Xayd]

Using samba? If so, yes. The only experimental part about NTFS is mounting them directly.

[Blue_Gundam2002]

Thanks