Jus a few questions
 

Hi all,
I am fairly new to the linux community. I have read a couple of books on it and soon I hope to destroy my windoze partition. I am trying to understand "linux only" file formats, like rc.d files. i already understand .oog files and simple extentions like that.
Also the Xserver. Why do they call it a server, and is winblows explorer a server also? What is the difference?
Another question I have is with defragging. Is there a program that can do this or is there no need to defrag your hard drive because of ext2fs. Another similar question is fsck. I know you can't check mounted filesystems, so how would you do a thorough job scanning root (/), and not the quick check it does at startup.
Also I installed XPde (just to check it out) I followed the instructions and I had to run chmod without su privledges, i also changed some files in /etc (XPde told me too). but now I can't run XPde with root (it gives me "the screen didn't last more than 10 seconds" or something like that). How do i change this?
I am also trying to understand the whole aspect of "shared libraries" in linux. I basically want to compile everything from source code and not deal with RPM dependancies. So my question is what are the most popular libs packages (not RPM packages though) i could download and install so that most programs will run properly?
I just have one more question. I am starting to learn how to program and instead of using Emacs and Vi I wanted to use DevC++. Is this a good choice for beginners. and is there any libs I need to get DevC++ up and running?
Thank you very much.:Pengy:

Calm down and step away from the firehose. :D


What books have you read?

Red hat 8 bible, understanding linux , and a bunch of PDF e books off of kazaa and emule

They call it X-server because it uses network protocols... The X-windows system communicates with the Linux kernel the same way that you communicate with your ICQ buddies (except with no latency) across the country. Instead it just communicates to itself inside the machine. This is one of the reasons why Linux is so powerful, the window system is a sepperate entity away from the fragile kernel. If you have a really slow computer at home, you can load linux with basic GUI and use it as a sort of "dumb terminal." This means you can log onto your fast P4 (for example) from the slow system, and run any kind of session you want harnessing the power of the P4. Look up XDMCP and how to set it up, on both of your systems (the slow and the faster one). I have an old Compaq (PII 350) that I use all the time to piggyback onto my faster Athlon XP.