No Floppy A Drive
 

I am working on a laptop, with win 7, and i am trying to dual boot red hat 7, i am booting from CD and it comes up fine, but mid way through install it askes me what floppy drive i have, but alas i am on a laptop, no floppy, is it impossible to install without a floppy a drive?

floppy drive? Are you talking about the original redhat 7? From 2000?

Red Hat 7 is over a decade old and will not work on modern hardware like your laptop. You can purchase (it is not free, but they do offer a 30 day trial period) the latest version from: http://redhat.com

If you prefer a free-of-charge Linux distro then there are many options. CentOS and Scientific Linux are exact "clones" of Red Hat, while distros like Ubuntu and Mint may be a better option if you are new to Linux and looking for a general-purpose laptop distribution. If you tell us more about your self and about your hardware, I'm sure you'll get lots of great suggestions. :)

Welcome to the forums! :)

Hello and welcome to the forums!

I know, I am repeating what snowpine said.... But RHEL 7? You really need to upgrade ;)

you would have as much problems installing windows 98 on that laptop and RH7
they are from the same era

IF you MUST USE red hat on a laptop ( can be done BUT not recommended ) then use the current
RHEL 6.2
red hat did a naming change back in 2003
RH9 ( yes 9 it newer than 7 ) went to RHEL3
rhel is NOT free you MUST but a license

or

use one of the free rebuilds
CentOS and ScientificLinux
but you DO NOT get any paid for tech support

also rhel tends to be OLD
stable - as in it dose not crash , but on the old side
GREAT for a server or in the office
but not good for a laptop

for a laptop something in the red hat family like Fedora 16 would do better
but for a new to linux user i would recommend "Linux Mint"

thank you for the welcome, and yes it is an original disk, are CentOS and Scientific Linux good alt.s?
which is the better of the two?
i am def. new to linux,

cent or SL
both
but both are not good for a laptop
yes most laptops will mostly work and most hardware is supported
but not EVERY laptop will run RHEL
and most will only work mostly well

but if you MUST use rhel ( or cent / SL )
download the current
CentOS 6.2
or
SL 6.2

Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is "open source" software, CentOS and Scientific use the exact same source code. The only big differences are: A) all Red Hat logos/branding/artwork has been removed; B) the mechanism for authenticating one's paid subscription with Red Hat is obviously not necessary.

Since we don't know anything about you, your hardware, or your purpose for using Linux, it is impossible to recommend a distribution. If you tell us more info, you'll get better help. Red Hat (by which I also include its clones) is designed to be a super-stable operating system for server farms, corporations, government, schools, military, system administrators--but not necessarily the easiest choice for a typical worker/student/home user who just wants to surf Facebook, watch Youtube, etc.

ps You may find this list of certified hardware helpful: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compatibility/hardware/

i want it for security reasons
which brings me to a follow up question, what are some good network security softwares for linux?

SELinux , built in to RHEL /Cent/SL/and fedora

and sort
http://www.snort.org/

Because of the non-standard feature-sets in many laptop computers, you may need to try several Linux distributions before you find one that installs fully and correctly. I have found that distros that emphasize latest/newest version of most things have the most success. Fedora and OpenSuse always seem to do best on laptops I've installed Linux on.

--- rod.

That is a very broad statement/question. What are your security concerns? Are you currently being targeted/attacked, and if so, what is the nature of the threat? What are you expecting Linux to allow you to do that using Windows is currently obstructing?

Anyway, to get you started with some reading material here is a good introduction to Linux security. (Written from an Ubuntu user's perspective but most concepts are universal.)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=510812

One of your best resources will be these forums. We have some real experts/pros here, so if you provide more info about your security questions/concerns (in the appropriate sub-forum with a descriptive thread title) I bet you can get a good answer. :)

SELinux is very secure: so secure that it thinks my printer's a security threat and I have to turn it off to print anything! If you want that level of paranoia, then it's CentOS for highly stable software or Kororaa for very up-to-date software (better than Scientific Linux or Fedora respectively).

If you just want a solid, reliable, easy-to-use distro, I'd suggest trying the live DVDs of Mepis and SalineOS. They use the KDE and Xfce desktops respectively, so you can see which you prefer. You'll get lots of software on the DVD and there's masses in the repositories.

i take it it is some off- off brand printer

on a wireless connection

just use "audit2allow" to write a se rule

and take a look at the fix presented in "SELinuxTroubleShooter"
that yellow star that poped up on the top right of the screen

SE almost never causes major problems , like it did 5 years ago

No, it's a Samsung laser printer on usb. After reading the SEL documentation, which might as well be in Mongolian for all the sense it made, and searching the internet for solutions, I left well alone. SEL was designed by the US National Security Administration for their own needs, to be handled by professionals. I have neither the inclination nor the need to puzzle out how it works.