A bunch of newbie questions so you can laugh at me
 

Ok, basic outline, I am on Redhat 9.0 in Gnome

1) How can I change the resolution? I go system settings > display, up the res to 1024 x 768 from the 800 x 600 I am on, say ok and it comes up with a dialogue box that says "Display settings changed, You need to log out and restart the X server for the changes to take effect", ok I think so I log out, then restart and when I come back its back to 800 x 600 still, any ideas? I have tried when I say log out both checking and unchecking the 'save current settings' as well as directly rebooting instead of logging out and doing it from the log on screen.

2) I am using GRUB as a loader with duel boot with Windows XP. When I started I had two options, linux kernal xxxxxx - 8 and windows. When I did auto update I got the new kernal so now I have three options, xxxxxxx - 8, xxxxxxxx - 9 (latest one) and windows. How can I remove the obsolete -8 kernal.

3) What would be the best way to install the latest KDE on my system. I unchecked the option from previous experiance when I found out I would have to uninstall all the RPM's on the system currently and then install the new ones, sounded like a mighty pain so I figured I would start without KDE and install it fresh. I looked on the KDE.org website however and their are no RPM's under redhat 9.0, is it released yet?

4) How do I extract TAR files, well a better question would be whats the most appropriate program for doing the task. I want to grab nedit but it only comes in the .tar format so I was wondering how to do it.

5) Any outlines of basic task commands would be greatly appreciated, for example how to install something and uninstall something. I am looking to uninstall mozilla and upgrade to the latest one etc. I am not familier with how RMP's work, any help is appreciated.


I understand that this is a lot of info for you guys to give so any help on any section would be greatly appreciated, I promise I will stop being a newbie soon (hopefully :) ). Thanks again in advance.

Hi :)

1 - I don't know :(

2 - I don't know either :(

3 - You cannot upgrade KDE from KDE, you have to do it another way, like installing the new fresh KDE from Gnome I think :)
There was a thread a short while ago about that:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...=Upgrading+KDE

4 - This was very well answered by one of our mods trickykid. Check this out:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=45094

5 - Also very well answered by trickykid here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=15837

Good luck :). Hope it was of any help though.

1 - It's possible your monitor or card won't support any higher resolution, though you'd probably have to have an old monitor for that to be true. You could try reconfiguring your X setup - not sure what tool Red Hat uses, but it may be that the gui thing gives you an option it looks like you can take, but if it's not in your config files, it's not really there. In other words, the panel-button-thing may show 1024x768 can be clicked, but if the config file has 1024x768 commented out, it probably won't do any good.

2 - If it's Red Hat, the kernel was probably an RPM package like anything else, so I guess you could do 'man rpm' to find whatever the command is for making rpm remove packages. But if you're not hurting for space, you might as well keep it in case you run into problems with the new kernel and want to go back. Your old kernel's probably not so much 'obsolete' as 'tested and stable' relative to the new one.

Sorry I'm not more familiar with RH, which seems to be a kind of idiosyncratic distro, but maybe that'll help somewhat. And the Red Hat site has better documentation than most - checking that out couldn't hurt.

You could also try searching google.com/linux for redhat X.X (version number) installation tips - that should give you some helpful hints - as far as using "man pages" is concerned, whenever I have looked at a "man page" for something, it leaves me totally confused - but that's up to you if you find them helpful.

regards

John

Thanks for your help so far, I found an excellent RPM guide

http://www.rootshell.be/~shekhar/rpmref.html

which has basically taken care of the majority of my RPM problems, which is great. Also I know the moniter can handle the res because I use it in windows, I had it previously in Redhat 8.0 and its a pretty new laptop so I can't see any problem with it, thanks for trying but I just don't think thats it. I tired man pages a few times but I just get lost in all the jargon unfortunately.

Thanks again for your help, more is definately welcome.