From: Anthony (ant at domain elivefree.net)
Date: Fri 12 Oct 2001 - 02:39:21 IST
Hi all,
I've been lurking on this list for quite a while now and figured that it
was time to introduce myself. I picked up a copy of Red Hat Linux
Unleashed (from SAMS) in Chapters about a year ago. It came with Red Hat
5.2 and last June I finally took the plunge and installed it on my old
120 MHz Toshiba Tecra laptop.
It's been both an exciting and frustrating ride and I've enjoyed
learning a new OS - and way of thinking. So far I haven't needed to ask
any questions as I have a copy of O'Reilly's "Running Linux". Every
newbie should invest in this book. I borrowed "Linux for Dummies" from
the library. It explained the concepts simply enough but wasn't much
help if things didn't go smoothly. "Running Linux" explains how the
system works, how to interpret error messages, how and where to get
them and basically how to get things working. I can't recommend this
book enough. Reading the HOWTOs, man pages and other documentation that
came with the distro solved any other problems I had.
Getting X to work with my monitor was the toughest thing. It took a week
of hacking my XF86config and trying the various modeline settings that
Google directed me to. It did give me the time to learn to love the bash
command line - well to respect and appreciate it any rate. Next hardest
was getting PPP to work. PCMCIA-HOWTO and Minicom were my friends in
that case. The most recent kicks came from recompiling the kernel and
paring down my System V init scripts for maximum memory efficiency.
My next objective is to upgrade to Red Hat 6 as I need newer libraries
installed to compile certain packages. I just thought I'd ask if anyone
has had any problems with using the Red Hat upgrade facility or if there
are any other issues I should be aware of. I've edited a lot of
configuration files and installed a few packages from source and would
rather keep all these settings as they are.
Many thanks,
Anthony.
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