How to add links to last X posts?

Never mind… just realized it was as simple as including the b2 post engine, with the permalink_link () variable wrapped around the the_title() variable.
So now my question is: How do I control the number of posts in my index of recent posts? For that matter, how do I control the number appearing on the main part of the page?

There’s a much easier way to do it:
<?php get_archives(‘postbypost’, 8); ?>
This will display the last 8 posts. Change “8” to whatever number you prefer…

Anonymous (second post on this thread, thats why names are important :-)) look for the option under your main blog admin page, under options and then under other options. That “posts_per_page” controls all the posts on the index page.

But is there any way of controlling the number of posts displayed within the template? I vaguely remember this being possible with b2 — something like ‘posts=5’ in the header?
(Also, if you use get_archives to get links to the last few entries you have to choose between dates and titles, whereas if you’re using the post engine you can display both.)