I am completely new to the world of Linux and have a lot of difficulty installing anything in a Linux environment. I was using Mandrake until my hard disk crashed and wiped out my favorite Linux distribution. Right now I am running Knoppix until I change computers.

A friend of mine said it's possible to edit a version of Knoppix to one's taste. That's my intention.

About a year and a half ago, I bought a distribution of Crossover Windows and I was running a certain software program on it (the name of which I shall not mention here to avoid ruffling people's feathers).

Open Office is a possibility, but it means new reformatting each time I or a colleage of mine opens a document at work (i.e. OO changes paragraphs, the tabulation, and bullets become weird symbols).

My friend says installing Crossover Windows on my Knoppix CD-ROM would work, but he also mentioned he thinks it would be impossible to install anything that would normally require a graphic environment, as any MSWindows program would do.

What are your suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Claude Routhier, Montréal