Damn Small Linux - Not!

James Deagle · Joined: 16 Nov 2006 Posts: 1

Hi, all.

I've been a DSL-N user for only about a month now, and after three years of trying to get an old Slackware distro running on my uncooperative Dell Latitude laptop, I feel I'm only now beginning to remotely understand/appreciate GNU/Linux. Hopefully it is just my GNU/Linux naivete that is preventing me from seeing a way around the problem described below.

Up until sometime last week I was able to download packages just fine from the MyDSL Repository. Since then, however, when I go to download, the browser (be it Seamonkey or Firefox) freezes for about a good three minutes and then, rather than the package downloading to my machine, the browser advances to a new page filled with some kind of machine-level gibberish. (The gibberish looks like a bunch of squares.)

Does anyone recognize the problem described above and, if so, do you know any easy solutions short of re-installing DSL-N from scratch?

Here's something that may have everything or nothing to do with this problem: around the same time the download capability went poof, I was on IRC chat when someone sent me a private message saying "I just uploaded a trojan horse to your PC". At the time I didn't think anything of it, as I don't associate viruses with GNU/Linux, but now in restrospect I'm a little worried. Is there somewhere I can get a virus detector/repair program for this OS?

Thank you for your time and consideration.