On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, Judy and Chris Beaudette wrote:
> in my searches for useful texts, i came across the following book:
>
> "LINUX -- Installation, Configuration, Use; 2nd ed."
> by Michael Kofler; Addison-Wesley Publishing
>
> the cool thing about this book is that it comes with a Red Hat 6.0 cd, all
> for $45, which i thought was pretty reasonable.
Well, you can get just the Red Hat CD for effectively nothing, so that's a
$45 book. Still, not too bad, based on price alone, but I don't know how good
the text is. AWL is usually above average, though.
> 2. if you advise against it, are there any good texts that you would
> recommend for installing, configuring, and using linux?
Personally, I recommend "Running Linux" by Matt Welsh, et. al. He's the
same guy who started the Linux Documentation Project
(http://www.linuxdoc.org), and it's a great book. For that matter, check out
the web site -- often, I find all the answers to my Linux questions there.
> 3. is it worth it to install red hat 6.0, considering it's now at 6.2?
Not particularly. I'd just pick up a 6.2 CD. You can get them for a few
bucks. That's just the CD, no printed manuals, no technical support, but the
story is the same with the CD in the back of that book.
> 4. would i be able to get a free upgrade to 6.2 if i install 6.0 from this
> cd?
You can get a free original copy of 6.2, if you have the bandwidth to
download it from Red Hat's site. That's the free upgrade procedure, too.
Red Hat makes money selling the packaging and support; the software itself is
free.
> 5. do any red hatters out there know what this cd is likely to come with?
> for example, is there a "baseline" installation of red hat that this cd is
> likely to have? will it have apache web server? etc. etc.
It has long been Red Hat's policy to keep their "main" distribution on a
single CD, so unless the publisher has changed things around (unlikely), that
single disc will include the full (non-commercial) distribution. It does
include Apache. The complete package list for 6.2 is here:
http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/package_list.html
The 6.0 package list is here (join into one line):
http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/
RHL-6.0-Manual/install-guide/manual/doc000.html
> 6. finally, i'm considering installing linux/red hat/whatever on a
> pentium 100 w/ 48 MB ram and 1 GB disk space. is that a reasonable
> machine?
Sure, it would make a pretty decent server (with X11 turned off), or an
acceptable if somewhat slow X11 workstation. I don't think you will be able
to install all of the packages in only 1 GB, though.
> (is the X-windows equivalent for linux a resource hog?)
The X Windows equivalent for Linux is X Windows, specifically the
implementation called XFree (http://www.xfree.org). It isn't any more of a
resource hog then any other X11 implementation. You can certainly strip it
down to a simple window manager with no flashy graphics and run a minimal
system pretty well, but the default GNOME and/or KDE desktops Red Hat ships
are much more resource intensive. You could do it, but you'll be waiting a
lot.
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. |
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