Interested in migrating-- Newbie questions

[Chuck_Denk]

My Windows XP got corrupted for the second time, and I am ready to migrate to Linux via Knoppix. I have a few questions:

[1] My NTFS files are still intact. Do I need to add a Linux partition? Would it be safer to do this on a new hard drive?

[2] Running some Knoppix web browsers, I don't seem to have Flash, so no access to YouTube. Is there a fix?

[3] OO Draw doesn't want to open my Corel Draw v.12 documents-- it hangs. Any suggestions?

[4] Yahoo mail says it doesn't support Iceweasel or Konqueror. Is that a problem--seems to work okay? I like Firefox-- can I go that way?

These are the most immediate things affecting my will to migrate. Any help would be appreciated.

CD

[Harry Kuhman]

So many issues.

On 1, you likely can't just add a partition (or two) as you likely don't have unused unformatted space on the disk to do it. I'm thinking that you want to recover some files off of the NTFS partition at some point. Yes, a second hard disk would be a very good way to go. As long as the old disk is not corrupted you can read the files off of it later.

Knoppix is a Live CD. If you're considering switching from Windows to Linux I would urge you to read the warnings about not trying to use Knoppix as a distro installed to hard disk, and consider another option, such as the testing version of Debian. knoppix is based on Debian, if you like Knoppix then you should love Debian.

Icewesal is basically Firefox.

The fix for your flash issue should be to install a distro that installs properly to hard disk, then install the browsers of your choice and install flash in them.

I don't know the answer to your Corel issue. Open office isn't perfect. You might be able to run Corel under wine. You might install VMware and then keep a virtual machine with Windows installed on it for just these little issues. Or you might just leave Corel behind and focus on tools that are new to you but have soimilar functionality. I think Corel for a while was supporting Linux natively, although I'm not sure if they any longer are.