(Was: How to safely update open office to 2.0+?) OK, I didn't pick up the point about an old version of Mandrake. Now I understand the "safely" part. That does lead to a need for some hacking. If you want the latest apps, and don't want a major hacking challenge each time you want to update, then it's best to have a fairly fresh OS and application environment. I've learned to move on to new distros every year or two, and keep a few on the back burner so I know what's out there. Otherwise, Linux definitely has forced-obsolescence problems like any other environment, because the software and hardware continue to develop. Since I also do some work in Windows, and share files between Windows and Linux, I have my data neatly tucked into separate partitions, mostly FAT32, and this means I can replace an operating system easily without having to rebuild my whole life. AS A RESULT, I'd like to have lots of Linux versions in place at the same time, for multi-booting. This leads to a partitioning question. I have this nice 130-GB disk. I would like to break it up into a whole slew of partitions, but I gather there are definite limits. Thus I can't have, for example, 99 different OSes on this drive each with its own boot partition. Right? How far can I go in this direction? Is there a practical way to have partitions within partitions or something? Something like an ISO filesystem housed in an ordinary file? If so can it update its data while running? Etc. . . . I'm thinking that VMWare and lots of virtual profiles could be one way to go, and that way I could keep one basic system running all the time while I'm tinkering with the others. But I'd like to look into the multi-multi-boot approach too, if I could put lots of boot partitions on one disk. Ideas? Thanks, Vic ---- KevinO wrote Re: How to safely update . . . - - - What you don't understand is that he is running an outdated and unsupported version of Mandrake, so there aren't any pre-made packages for his distribution containing the latest version of OO. - - - --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss