och! asking a newbie to partition... ;)
hey, it's just 3 gb. if it were me, i'd just go for one partition and the swap. or leave it as it is first. you can learn about partitioning in your own time. i don't see where regrets come in.

as for the speed, don't worry about it. bear with it for now, try out some stuff first on you new linux box, and as you learn more and more, you'll get the hang of it and learn how to "speed up" the things you need to do.

you open tar.gz files like this:
gunzip yourDownloadedFile.tar.gz
after it's done, you get a file with only the .tar extension. you "untar" it like this:
tar -xvf yourDownloadedFile.tar
it'll then unpack itself.

you should be able to do the same to .tgz packages.

to find out more about gzip/gunzip and tar commands, type "man gzip" and "man tar" to see the manuals/info on them.

for rpms, you install it like this:
rpm -i yourDownloadedFile.rpm
or if you're upgrading:
rpm -U yourDownloadedFile.rpm
if you want to remove the package:
rpm -e yourDownloadedFile

again, type "man rpm" to see what all the options are and what the heck all this is about ;)

good luck

word from the wise
"TRY IT ON THE 3 GIG FIRST"
run through the install one time on a hd that you dont need to make sure
that everything is smooth

oh yea... and if you want more info on partitioning...
check out:
http://pw1.netcom.com/~kmself/Linux/FAQs/partition.html
and
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/

and yea... like what h2007 sayz, don't throw out your 10GB. ;)
just play with the 3GB first.

you don't want to spend your time pulling out your hair... ;)

we are all newbies on this site, until u have posted 25 or 26 times then they list u as member, then after god knows how many posts, they list u as "LQ addict"

im gonna work on that soon, but could i please just ask someone, what do i use to open different file types in redhat 7.3?

i cant open tar.gz, tgz or rpm :(

Oh and while I'm thinking about it, if you happen to make a bollox's of the linux install, I suspect that you can re-install over the top " afresh". LIke the man sed, just make sure u read the prompt carefully, specially if it offers u the chance to put ur boot loader on to floppy, My SuSE intall went ok first, but as they don't even acknowledge the existence of my usb adsl modem I slung mandrake 8.2 over the top and didn't watch the prompt carefully enough (complacency) and it overwrote my xp boot record, and it took a millenium to re-install all the windows stuff before re-install the SuSE (which I am comfortable with - probably becos of the ease with which it installed) and am having to wait for my bruvver (an experienced IT professional) to come and config my modem/system devices etc.

www.google.com/linux then anything regarding linux will give u a mountain of shit to read!!

regards

bigjohn

banelion... i replied to that question in an earlier post. all you have to do is get a console running (can be xterm, rxvt, or any other console) and type in the commands i told you about earlier.

(and a console is something like a dos window)

As far as I can work out, u first goto get into command line set up with "shell" or something like that, then u've got to either "untar" a tar file, or gunzip a gz file, can't remember wot it is u do 4 the rpm's as at the moment, I have to download to floppy thru xp, then "mount" the floppy in linux to get access to it etc etc.

the only snag is that you have to remember the commands to unzip/install etc it's something like "tar xvf -filename" or some shit like that.

If you can open a "shell" u cud try typing "man tar" or "man gz" it might give u a clear enough explanation what these file types are.

Just don't forget linux IS case sensitive!!!

bigjohn

we have a glossary section with tar and rpm, including some examples of the uses and installation of these files.

for tar: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ryid=35&long=1

for rpm: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ryid=65&long=1

search the site, there have been tons or questions about linux running slow and how to customize this to your needs. most likely a default install of redhat has about every service running like httpd for web pages, ssh, ftp, telnet...etc. and of course if your using gnome or kde, those are hogs, you can get a smaller window manager to speed up while in X.

if you search, you'll find many ways to customize you linux install.
my linux systems wipe out my windows machines in speed.
i have a 400mhz celeron, 128 mb RAM, with 100 mb swap that boots in 27 seconds and enlightenment loads in about 7/10ths of a second literally after starting X.
yes i timed it one day and then timed my win98 which boots on a 800mhz duron, 512 mb of ram in about a good minute or so.

keep reading and you'll learn you can do about anything in Linux that you can in windows with a whole lot more. :)

sorry about asking the question again, i dont know what happened there, maybe i didn't see the 2nd page :)

thx for all your help everyone.

also, does anyone know how i would go about installing half-life on linux? do i just put in the install cd and click install? or do i need a special linux version?

also, i did a full install of redhat, so maybe thats why :) does anyone know of any service viewer like in winnt so i can just disable all the useless stuff?

i hear people talking about window x or something, i take it that's the gui like kde etc..? i know that u can click on a thing to open a window like the command prompt in windows, but is there a way to get to a native command prompt? i think i heard someone talk about that. by native, i mean closing down window x complety.

thanks again everyone!

btw, dont worry about me killing my xp machine, all my files are on a file server, its just a backup internet browser and word processor, i rebuild it all the time with ghost.

on that point, i have my internet running through xp's internet connection sharing on another computer (laugh all you want but ill get around to putting internet on the linux box later), does anyone know how to get linux to use the internet through that?

thanks in advance,

-James

... and on the point of my name, yesterday i reinstalled linux coz i couldnt get into it, and today realised that it was because my username was case-sensitive :)

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:Pengy: :newbie:
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ouch! well, you won't be the first one ;)

No, you can't (normally) just open your cd and click 'install'. That is a Windows installer. I don't know if that game is available for use native in linux, but you may be able to 'port' it over with a program called Wine. You can read more about that program at The Wine Homepage or by doing a search on here.




(You actually hear people, like voices in your head? he he he j/k)Yes, X windows, better known as simply X is exactly what you are used to in Microsucks Winbloze, a GUI. Yes KDE is 1 option out of about a zillion that you can use in an X environment. While you are X you can access Virtual Terminals, or Consoles. These are what you may think of as DOS. It's a command line interface. There are several programs that allow this. Xterm, Eterm, and Konsole are just a few that I just glanced at in my distro. To run them... You probably have a menu at the bottom of your screen with icons in it. In KDE this is known as kicker. In kicker you have one that looks like a small monitor, if you click it, you will have the Konsole or something like it. There you can enter the 'command-line' commands. If you want to leave your GUI and go to a 'command-line' only interface you would type: CTRL+ALT+F2 (any F key 1-6 will work the same). Then to return to your GUI type: (most likely) CTRL+ALT+F7. If that doesn't work, try F8.

And welcome to Linux, it's the best thing since sliced bread.

For some unknown reason, RedHat didn't set up Gnome to handle these in the GUI by default.

When starting up RedHat, when it gets to the login screen, you can run KDE instead of Gnome. (pick it from the drop down list)

Once in KDE, start up the file browser (called "Konqueror") and then you can un-tar and un-gzip all your files by pointing at them, right clicking, and pick "Extract".

Also, in KDE, the RPM file is associated with kpackage, so if you double click on an RPM, you will get a wizard that will install it for you.

So I guess the point of all this is, if you are a newbie to linux and you are using RedHat 7.3, I recommend KDE over Gnome.

(If you think you can handle it, if you look around on the Gnome Menu, you can actually start Konqueror from inside Gnome and do your extracts and RPM installs that way.)