That's a great way to put it, actually. You just have to realize that there are deffinate alternatives to the "standard" programs and applications.

Poetics

yup, that's poetry to my ears :)

Actually, as I figured it out (please correct me if i'm wrong) the main power isn't in the machine, it's in the software that you're are using and in the way that you're using it.

Enjoy

Precicely. It's a matter of knowing how you want to use your system and knowing what tools are best suited. You wouldn't run advanced rendering software on a P1 any more than you would run Windows 1 (yes, such a thing exists) on your brand new Athlon 2000+. The more you know about your needs and your options, the better suited you'll be to do anything you want

DELI Linux

www.distrowatch.com

Haha.. thanks for the great advice. Well, i got slackware running, and like i said, i've used linux before, but not thoroughly. How do i start my GUI?

Meaning, im at the console, and i don't knwo what to do from here, i want to load up a window manager maybe?

Thanks.

Well, if you've got X then you should have chosen a default window manager. So you can try 'startx'. If things go haywire, you can try 'xf86config' or whathaveyou. And if you want to switch window managers, do 'xwmconfig'.

Or you can just do a lot of cd'ing and ls'ing or fire up mc and play around in console for awhile just to see what's going on under the hood. :) 'Course, you can do that in an xterm, too.

Well, im using KDE 3 on Slackware 9.0 right now. Im pretty impressed, it runs faster than the KDE on redhat. It seems reasonable, i'll check out those other environments later

Right now, i want to activate Apache/PHP and MYSql.

Can anyone redirect to some assistance? I think they're all already installed. I just need to know how to configure them, or turn em on or whatever

Thanks again.

UBer

Welcome to Slackware.

As for apache try browsing to http://127.0.0.1:80/
I can't remember but it may already be set up on install, that is if you installed apache.

Not real familiar with MYSql

good luck to you and happy slacking

Ports and localhost should already be defined. There should be no need for all the numbering other than it's good to learn ;) A browsing to:
http://localhost
should reveal the same as the above. 127.0.0.1 should be defined in /etc/hosts already as 'localhost' and port 80 is the standard http port and if Apache is the default setup, then it's on the standard port ;)

Again, that is if it's installed.

MySQL actually is VERY learnable straight from the docs at www.mysql.com You should use examples like it uses, but customize them to your own needs. That way you can see parallels to what they are trying to do and your situation.

HTH

Cool

Well.. Okay. Like most of you have already realized by now, I grew up using DOS/windows so im used to the answers jus given to me. Lol

But, im going to try to seriously embrace myself in this vast Linux world of massive Docs and Manuals. .LOL

So heres whats gonna happen, ima read these docs. and Learn!

Again, thanks again guys. Stay tuned in case i have further question. I appreciate everything!

=Uber

MasterC is completely right about the addressing I just like to get people familiar with the ports they are using and the :80 is a conscious reminder. Comes from having taught a lot of classes I guess, heh.

Good luck to you.

Okay, for those who have been keeping up.

Im trying to setup a Apache/PHP/MySql linux server. Im having some difficulty however getting the hang of Linux.

Some things may be obvious to others, but not to me

1) How the hell do people understand MAN pages? What are they and what do they mean? i've read a few. And they offer no help whatsover to me (a linux newbie). Can someone tell me how to interpret these things?

2) Once i install a program, where does it go? How do i run it?

3) How do i create a new, non-root user account?

Again, thanks for helpin out a linux newbie.

=Uber

2) just type the program name at the CLI. Such as "nethack" runs the nethack game, if you have it installed. If that doesn't work, you either need to "cd" into the direcotry it's installed into and run it from there, or add the directory to your path ;)

3) "adduser" (and make sure to set their password)

1) (saving the hardest for last) the man pages are quite a bit to go through, I deffinately admit that. There are various places online where you can browse them, which is nice because they print out very easily for easy reference later (you don't have to drop what you're doing or switch to another console to read the page, meaning). Don't look just at the man pages but also online (or just search these forums for the command name), and you'll find a wealth of information

Adding to Poetics - Man pages are essentially for people who already know what they're doing but may have forgotten whether the options they want are '-qr4stzpf' or -qr4sTzpf'. *g* That said, they're still very useful, mostly for simple (or not so simple) utilities. Full-fledged applications usually come with some kind of documentation on a website, in the source directory, or in /usr/doc that is often a better place to start.

It also depends on the man page author - some are incoherently cryptic and some are a breeze.

For finding stuff, there's

which - searches path only
whereis - which will find your man pages and source, too
find - searches the whole drive, which can be kinda slow
and my favorite:
locate - which searches a database of the whole drive and is a lot faster but needs to updated as root and often needs to be piped through less because it can return a lot of stuff. All have as the simplest syntax: 'command file'

Quick answer - it usually goes in /usr/bin or /usr/X11R6/bin or /bin. Sometimes the various sbins. Sometimes somewhere utterly weird. *g*

blackbox is very fast, but lacks keybd support. if you lose mouse support, then you'll either go for the restart , or on/ off button (i know i did). seen a bunch of people rave about fluxbox, which is based on blackbox, w/ icons, and keybd support.

perhaps try vector linux, as it's based on slackware, and they strive to keep it small and quick.

btw, you'll probably install, and reinstall a bunch of times, and probably try a bunch of different distros as well. i think the partitioning, and mount point aspect of the installs is the hurdle to get over. best to know the system hardware well, just to be certain that auto detection is making the correct choices.