Great Catch owbist, thanks. Those will keep me busy until the wee hours of the morning, and then some. Steve

Claims to have had his Linux gateway hacked by someone using an "SSH over an unusual port number". It's like shooting yourself in the butt ... hard to do and you have to do several foolish things in a row. He would have to have had an ssh server installed, which most Linux distros don't do by default unless you select "set me up a server" from your install options. I just checked, and I have a client, but not the server. He would have had to have deliberately configured to answer requests on unusual port numbers instead of silently ignoring them. The default ports are what you get on a vanilla install. It would have to be answering SSH requests over the Internet, not sitting behind a router, unless that router was also deliberately configured to allow unusual port numbers. ========= To check, open your Software manager or Synaptic and look for openssh ... if it's not installed it can't be hacked.

Owbist, thanks for the suggestion of a new thread. The computer I am having problems with only has X-P. Due to a problem with my X-P machine, I have put the Ubuntu project on the back burner. Please allow me to tell you about my new problem. X-P SP3, 1024 MB memory. Due to a connection related problem I talked to the folks at ATT. They got me back on line but the computer is very slow, it has not crashed, but it takes forever for the pages to load. Sometimes I type faster than the computer can load the images of the type, and I am a very slow typer. When going from one web page to another is seems like forever. When I try to click back to the former page, also takes a long time. Also, the pages load small and I have to enlarge them, nothing seems to work like it should. I have run Malwarebytes, Ccleaner, Spyware Blaster and defragged the computer...nothing bad showed up. Steve

Please pardon this quick deviation. I've read this forum, off and on, for about 5 years. "majickmann" seemed familiar, but figured that it is German for "magic man", which is a long-time favorite song by Heart. Then, I realized that for the very reason above, I remember a majickmann that used to post to this forum. Are you the same person? I took your advice, ravencajun, to read the AVG posts. And, I must say that was an abrasive post by majickmann. So, majickmann, you certainly could have been nicer. "Blindly" was definitely crossing the line. But, I don't see what is wrong with the rest of his posts, including the two posts above. They have been polite and informative. In your post above, I had understood the links are to installation instructions for Kubuntu and Ubuntu 8.04. And, that "the distro number versions are out dated now since there is a new version". It seems very clear to me that there is a newer version Ubuntu (8.10), so I would want to download it. And, I could use the tutorials even though they were for the out dated version. Majickmann's reply was polite and provided an explanation about the two version of Ubuntu. While I understood what he said, just like on the Ubuntu pages, this is where majickmann probably should have explained the meaning of long term support. Because I did not understand why anyone would want to install an out dated version. So, I turned to my husband, the IT guru. (He really is.) Basically, my husband said that many people want the long term support version because the environment is stable and is supported for 3 or 5 years. That would be me. I don't want to "upgrade" every 6 months. The other people, for varying reasons, want to be "on the bleeding edge" or want the improvements associated with the newer version. So, they may upgrade or install the newest version as soon as it's available. So, the 8.04 version is actually the newest Long Term Support version while 8.10 is, for lack of a better term, the newest bleeding edge version. I'm confused with your last reply, for example, "I no where stated that the older versions were no longer available." You certainly did not make that statement, but, neither did majickmann. I hope each of you take my comments to heart. They are not meant to belittle anyone. Again, I find myself apologizing for the long winded post. But, it is my last post. espicer, I'm sorry we got so far off topic. I thought it would be good to contribute to the forum that has given me so much over the years. But, I now know that I'm just not a poster. It is too easy for misunderstandings over the simplest words or ideals. And, while I have the opportunity, thanks to everyone for the help and guidance over the past 5 or 6 years, especially cboy, mikie, owbist, majickmann, and most recently, ravencajun. Happy Holidays, Mimi