I'm more or less giving up for now. I have a laptop running RH 7.2 that had been used as a server for a special project that's now over. Now I wanted to use it as a more general-purpose server, so I tried to install Samba on it so it could interface with Windows PCs on my network.

I have several different copies of RH 7.2 (one from Red Hat, others that were included in Linux books I bought). They all have different Samba RPMs, none of which will load on my system. They all get errors due to unmatched dependencies -- all different.

My question is, am I doing something dumb? Or is it that Linux with its many independently-developed ancillary subsystems is just not really ready for someone who wants to use it and not play with it?

Don't give up Linux... give up Red Hat.

RPMs are the worst packaging system I've ever used. You'd be better off with other distros.

What you're experiencing is called "dependency hell". If you've got a network connection for that computer (preferably broadband) then get yourself something called apt4rpm. It will automatically figure out and install dependencies.