I am new to linux. tring it. how can I increase font?

Right click on the desktop, then click on the fonts tab.

No, you don't need anti virus software, because there are so few viruses for Linux. It's quite hard to write a virus that doesn't need root access to work. You still need to be careful: select a strong password, don't use an account with full root access for day to day work, Be wary if you are asked for the password for no apparent reason etc. I also turn off SSH access which closes all ports for it. Also be aware that nothing will stop phishing sites if you are silly enough to type your usernames and passwords into them.

Most of it is absolute common sense.

The extra security may seem onerous at first, but there's a good reason for it and you soon learn to live happily with it. The main thing is, if the computer is asking you to type in your password, you should be thinking about what you are doing: you will be asked for you password when running software updates, installing a program, or otherwise accessing protected filesystem areas on your computer.

The remnants of your XP filesystem will not cause any problems, but consider if you can just get rid of it since it's not working and start from scratch. Either you still need windows and should reinstall/repair it, or you don't in which case you should use the space more productively. If you've got any important data on the Windows partition you should back it up onto an external drive of course. Strictly speaking, you should have backed up before doing any Ubuntu installation or other changes, since the installer would have been resizing and moving partitions etc.

I should also point out that Ubuntu 9.10 is no longer supported, so you've installed a fairly old version and software updates may not be available for it. Ubuntu release numbers follow the date of release based on year and month so 9.10 was released in October 2009. We also have LTS releases that come out every two years. The last was 10.04 which is supported until April 2013 and the next will be the first release next year, 12.04.

Also the desktop environment has changed from Gnome to unity as of 11.04. Before you get too comfortable you should have a look at a newer version. You should download the ISO for 12.10 and burn an install CD, then re-install with that. You should also check the MD5sum of the ISO to make sure it's good, and burn at the slowest possible speed. Also consider if you should set up a separate home partition. Ubuntu only needs a root partition of about 15 - 20GB and the rest can be for your data as /home. Having the data on a separate /home partition makes safer and easier to do re-installs or upgrades later on.

Here's some reading that should get you started:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome

Chris

Thanks Chris, that solved my question.

Chris:
I will take your suggestions.

I see latest version is 11.10.

Could you tell me how I can either reinstall XP or remove it myself?
the reinstall CD I have is an earlier version so doesn't work.

Roland

I tried to download 11.10 3 times but it quits halfway thru. says not enough room on the disk.
guess I will have to order the CD or remove XP.

Roland

a dialog box pops up and says my computer has no more disk space.
help!

Hi Roland, it's appears that the Ubuntu set up a very small partition to install to, or possibly you've installed with Wubi under your original Windows when it was still running.

An easy fix is to insert the Ubuntu LiveCD that you have (presumably 9.10 that you used to install) and either install from that, or boot off it and run Gparted (already installed in the LiveCD Ubuntu) and use that to resize your partition if possible so that you have more space.

You could also make more space by removing data from your /home and uninstalling any outdated kernels. Each kernel only takes up about 100Mb or so, but currently you must only have less than 400Mb available.

Another thing you can do is un-install any programs you don't use, or don't need right now. Also flush out any deb installation files left over from updates. Open a terminal windows and do the following:

sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb

All of this should give you enough space to get working again. The ISO is less than 700Mb so I guess you could tell it to download it straight to a USB stick if you had to.

Chris