I am a TOTAL noob.
 

I'm not going to hassle you guys with a whole bunch of questions, so I'm hoping you can just give me a path to run off of. I just installed RedHat Linux 9 on my PC. This is the first time I've ever installed it, or even really used it. I know enough to know that I should be referring to the "man" pages, but I have no idea what these are, or where I can find them.

Can anyone point me to a tutorial or something on how to use man pages? Mainly I'm just trying to find out how to install programs. Like, what the hell is an RPM? What is a tar.gzip? Stuff like that. Any assistance would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Norrin

I suggest you get a good linux book. Here are links to some tutorials that will teach you the basics.
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/cgi-b...pl?224&0&0&0&3
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/RPM-HOWTO/

Thanks, Jatt. I actually just ordered the Red Hat 9 Bible. I don't know how "good" that book is compared to others, but I'm thinking it will give me enough basic info to learn where I should go for more specific questions.

Its a good book. Welcome to linux! throw away win-doze :D

Though you don't say Norrin,

I presume that you got to dual boot - something like xp and the redhat.

If that's the case then although Jatt_thugz mentions " throw away win-doze :D" I'd say that maybe it's worth keeping a windows version available. If you got your modem working under linux - then use the redhat mainly (exclusively if you can), but as and when you start to "modify" things - it is a racing certainty that you will do something that will screw the install (I've killed the system so many times, I could probably install mandrake blindfolded - and still don't know the square root of shit).

The book sounds like an excellent idea (maybe I should have done the same thing - oh isn't hindsight wonderful). But one of my "pet hates" is poor documentation. Either poor in quality or poor in quantity, and still badly written. I have found that too much is written for geeks, by geeks. Unless you have a full understanding of geek and nurdesque, then like me, you will end up in "WTF mode 1 alpha" :D

Lets face it, you are pretty far along already, system installed and running, registered with LQ and just waiting for the book to arrive!

Well done.

regards

John

Hi Norrin

The Linux Newbie Administrator guide is excellent for new Linux users - there's tons of good info at a pleasant level. - Just download what you want - well worth a look.

http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/index.html

Though you don't say Norrin,

I presume that you got to dual boot - something like xp and the redhat.

XP = Teh Devil

I had 2000 on the machine, but I thought I'd just blow it away and go solely with Linux. I've heard wonderful things about the OS from nearly everybody in the computing world, so I just felt like I was missing out on something :)

I have a laptop that I'm keeping 2000 on for "work" purposes and such. Mostly if I break things, I can still use Windows on another system to download drivers, bug you guys, etc ;)

If you got your modem working under linux - then use the redhat mainly (exclusively if you can), but as and when you start to "modify" things - it is a racing certainty that you will do something that will screw the install (I've killed the system so many times, I could probably install mandrake blindfolded - and still don't know the square root of shit).

Luckily I've got a network running at my house, so all Linux had to do was pick up my NIC and connect to my DHCP server. I was quite pleased with the simplicity of it all.

The book sounds like an excellent idea (maybe I should have done the same thing - oh isn't hindsight wonderful). But one of my "pet hates" is poor documentation. Either poor in quality or poor in quantity, and still badly written. I have found that too much is written for geeks, by geeks. Unless you have a full understanding of geek and nurdesque, then like me, you will end up in "WTF mode 1 alpha"

I agree with you 100 percent. I usually get so frustrated with books that assume you know exactly what you're talking about. If I knew what the hell was going on, I wouldn't have bought the book :D

Lets face it, you are pretty far along already, system installed and running, registered with LQ and just waiting for the book to arrive!

Thank you :)

I hope to make Linux my main OS sometime in the future. I definitely need to get used to it before I can get to all that. Which leads me to a quick question...

Should I stick with X and do everything graphically, or should I boot up to a command line and really start getting used to the shell environment? As a longtime Windows user, I've gotten fat and happy with my pretty GUIs, but I still remember the good old days of DOS. And from what I've heard, command line knowledge is necessary in Linux.

Hi Norrin

Most people use a command line shell from within X

Hi Norrin

Most people use a command line shell from within X

How would I open up a command line shell?

In Slack 9 - click on Konsole

In Mandrake 9.1 click on Konsole

In Red Hat click on Terminal

Well, if your system has the resources (it obviously has) then why don't you do most of the stuff graphically.

I tend to think that it's easier to be able to see what you are doing.

Not that that should matter - can't recall the look of the redhat desktop (or any gnome stuff really because I use mandrake with the defaults of lilo and kde), anyway, there should be a "terminal" icon (something like a TV screen is quite usual) open the terminal and you've got all the command line access youre ever gonna need - if it don't let you do something as a user, then issue the su command and enter the root password and bingo, off you go again. Then either su username back to your user account or close the terminal and re open it, youre back into the user account.

If you look at the "ruteuser" link in my sig, I think that that's got some command stuff. Either that, or I think someones posted a "hint or tip" type post about commands taken from something from one of "O'Really's" books.

regards

John

Thank you, John and Skyline :D

Way to go ...:D
You can also go into shell by doing:
ctrl+alt+f1
and then log back into graphical interface(desktop) by doing
ctrl+alt+f7

hey. norrin. what i do on my rh9 (im also a tragic noob) is i boot to CLI and then use the startx command to, well, start x. i like this method for two reasons - one, if someone (like my damned sister :P) guesses my password, she won't be able to manipulate the comp w/o a gui. the other reason is that using the cli makes me feel less noobish, and gives me confidence to tackle my problems (at least on linux :D). to do that, type "init 3" at the terminal.


--dave

hey. norrin. what i do on my rh9 (im also a tragic noob) is i boot to CLI and then use the startx command to, well, start x. i like this method for two reasons - one, if someone (like my damned sister :P) guesses my password, she won't be able to manipulate the comp w/o a gui. the other reason is that using the cli makes me feel less noobish, and gives me confidence to tackle my problems (at least on linux ). to do that, type "init 3" at the terminal.

Thanks for the tip :)

I'll probably start doing that as well just so I can familiarize myself with CLI. I can also impress my friends when they come over. :D

One more question for you guys (and thanks again for being so helpful) what is the difference between KDE, X, and Gnome? They're all windowing environments, right? If I installed Redhat 9, I'm assuming I have X, right? Is that the one I should stick with, or are their benefits to using the others?