I've Emailed so many people about glitches (Redhat included) that I'm unsure where start...I feel I'm being redundant...

But one never knows if one will get the answers unless one asks, so here we go...

I've been running Redhat 8.0 on a partitioned hard drive with WinME for a couple weeks now. Just getting there was a headache...but now I'm ready to start using this new and very useful operating system.

There are glitches that I'd like to see taken care of and questions that I need the answers to. Advice on anything is always appreciated...and as a new user to the forum, I also like to offer (in exchange for everyone's help) anything that I might know--which, admittedly, isn't much...I'm still a newbie, after all.

But I can tell you that I feel more welcomed and more active in the Linux community than I ever have with Microsoft...

But here are my Glitches:

I also can't get a sound to play when my Email comes in. When I go to the sound setup and enable it by checking the two boxes, mailcheck is all the way at the bottom of the list but when I highlight it nothing happens. I can't get into the box to pick the sound.

Whenever I use wineconsole to run a windows program, I get a warning message: fixme:cdrom:CDROM_GetIdeInterface CD-ROM device with major ID 11 not supported

Which doesn't make any sense since the programs that I'm running have nothing to do with the CDROM...



In making the switch, it feels like I've only substituted some problems for others. But at the same time, Linux is so versatile that I feel I can correct those problems rather than just deal with them...

At any rate, though, I'd rather have one OS that does everything than to have to keep switching between two that only do some things...

So here are my questions:

There's already been an update to Redhat. As soon as I installed the system, I got that little red exclaimation point and it downloaded an update.

Now, when my computer boots up I see three versions of Redhat and one of DOS...is this list going to get bigger and bigger as I get more updates? Isn't that going to be a little confusing?

Do you all recommend hooking up to RHN for updates? Or does it just make everything more complicated? What should I do if I get Emails warning me about erroneous updates?

By the will of some deviant god, none of the hardware that I own is compatible with Linux--Printer, Camera, USB Reader--when I hook them up to the system, I can see Linux reading them and even go to the /dev directory and see them. But I can't get any data to and from them.

This tells me that I'm half way there--that all I need to do, maybe, is write a kernel to make these devices useful. But is it really that simple?

What programs do I use to do this? Where do I find sources/webpages on the language I need to learn?



I think that's about it...thanks in advance for all your help...

Shabung

email - what program are you using for this? what is this sound setup? remember not everyone uses the same desktop as you...

wine - wine is not stable, it's even got "fixme" at the front, i.e. a note to the coders. ignore it. i'd never recommend usign wine, there's always a bertter linux version available. well. apart from games.

updates - ok i *guess* you've just been given extra newer kernels. it'd be too risky to automatically remove the older ones. edit your /etc/lilo.conf file and remove the older kernel entries. without seeing the file though, i couldn't tell you whih ones to remove. that will remove the entries, but i'd also say to remove the old kernel rpm packages as well.