well I'm kinda stuck beetween what I want to do with Linux
a part of me wants to go and learn Apache and mySQL and maybe set up a DNS server but another part wants to learn PYTHON
Give me ideas on what I should do I really don't know what I should do! and if you have some other idea please share I'm just confused!

I guess it depends on where you want to go! You couldn't go wrong by learning
python. There is a lot you can do with python, and a lot of things have already been
done with it. It will probably be helpful no matter what you decide to do next.

My own experience is that it's easier to learn something if I have a project in mind that benefits from that knowledge or tool. It's really hard to learn something like a programming language if you don't have some uses for it. In other words, I would put the question the other way around. Something like: "I want to set up a web server -- which should I learn first, Python or Apache?"

With regard to mySQL -- I had problems with setting it up, probably due to letting RedHat install it automatically, and not reading enough documentation. I had no problem setting up postgreSQL, either on RH9 or Slackware 9.1 (my current and best
liked distribution).

Good luck,

John Velman

I second the notions re PostgreSQL and Slackware ;)

[edit]
Plus, there's Python bindings for it, too ;)
http://www.pygresql.org/
[/edit]

Cheers,
Tink

so what you guys saying I should do?
for python I'm thinking I want to make a program that checks my "Music" folder on my webserver and if they're are new songs then automatically d/load them into a specified directory. Is this possible?

As far as I know this should be possible, although I have never personally
written a python program to access a web site.

This sounds to me like a good project. It seems to satisfy (1) create something
that you can use, (2) uses a fair amount of python capability without being
overly complex.

I'm far from being a python expert, but I'm pretty sure there are python lists and forums
where you can get help.

The place to start, though, is the python tutorial which you can find at

http://www.python.org/doc/current/download.html

if you don't already have it.

There is also a wealth of other info for python newbies at www.python.org

Good luck,

John Velman