>im worried about games phoning home >im worried about various apps phoning home. > >there are about 20 programs that i CANNOT replace with a linux app. > >and many of them phone home or auto update and i dont want to deal with any of that. >Some Windows programs also stop working if they cannot contact their 'home' server. You should be able, with Linux's facilities, to block communications from your programs to their 'home' server. The same can be done with the MacOSX firewall product. James McKenzie