Hi there folks, well yes I'm a newbie and have made some progress into the computer world, the reason this tread is posted is to see if I can get some of you folks to give me a bit of direction as far as getting of xp and moving on to linux, a brief history after struggling for years in business with poor computers and weak support, I'm trying to learn enough about linux to start building my own system, I bought a very inexpensive comp at a retailer her in Seattle by the name of Frys ($200.00) and it came with thinkLinux,( fry's version of Linux) I could not get the modem to work, so I was recommended suse 9.0 which I installed and gess what? modem would not work to connect to the internet, after a lot of frustrating research and about 3 modems a buddy at work told me linux is really a dsl program and needs a lot of work to run it on dial up sooo Bought x.p. got dsl and now I'm running windows xp which runs, but I feel is really nowhere as dependable as linux, the KDE desktop work great for me and was a great tool to cut the learning curb of linux, so here is the question....

can you tell me basically how to build a stand alone computer that will run linux and to pre engineer the machine so that I can be develop it in to a network. where this stand alone can be transformed to a dedicated server???

things to consider


#1 I would like to know basically how to back up both the data.. such as my address book, calendar information, documents... etc.
a) what type of back up system? cd tape ???

#2 how to back up the applications ( I suppose I could re install these in case of computer crash)


#3 back up the actual OS, ( is there such a thing as mirror where you have 2 hard drives one writes everything to the other as a back up)

#4 in case of a crash how to re isntall all of the back up data to have a functional system.

#5 the system should be able to host a webb site, and be able to expand
to webb cam, word processing apl storing docs via scanner etc...

#6 what about power back up??


#7 which mother board should I purchase how do you make sure it has all the appropriate ports??

#8 is anyone using this new broad band phone company Vonage in Lynux?? I'm using it on win-xp trough my DSL and it works great... should would like to know if it will work on Linux?? well let me post this and hopefully soon I will be building my little monster can hardly wait....

thank you in advance for your response .....

Well, I'm a noob here as well. I was doing some experimenting with Mandrake, Red Hat, and SuSe. After all that I heard about Slackware. Slackware is one of the hardest distros out there to learn, but I was determined to never go back to Windows.

It was a painful week and a lot of dew to get my slack box up and running. I used the guide that shilo posted up on this site, which he has his own site with a full-blown tutorial.

http://shilo.is-a-geek.com/slack

Slack has the steepest learning curve, but after having a passion for computers ever since I was 12, I don't think the same way again. I only recommend using this forum (I'm a new member here) and just doing lots and lots of research. You'll learn as much as you have patience for.

Good Luck.