Question on Unix

[Ollie]

All of the perl/cgi scripts are written for Unix, I even found a place to download unix for free but my questions are...
1) If I download it will it mess up my XP?
2) Will I become a server?
3) Do I actually need to have this in order to run one of the scripts?
All I am trying to do is an image rotation based on when the person posts the first image and have the image rotate accordingly.
I have a storage site lined up. I hope these questions dont sound dumb.. I am very new to this but very determined. Ollie

[Saj]

1. I shouldn't mess up XP...you just need some sort of program that can switch between OS's on start-up easily.

2. Your computer will NOT become a web server...you need some sort of software forst. The most common is the open-source apache, and its not too hard to install. To make the cgis work though, you'll need mod_perl on top of that.

3. Nope. You can run cgis on Windows easily enough. All you need is Apache, ActivePerl, mod_perl, and the few changes you need to make are to change the #! line from #/usr/bin/local/perl to #!C:\\Program Files\Perl\bin\perl. Also, all areas in the script that refer to the windows root directory instead of the internet, you just need to add \\ instead of /.