I just installed an old distribution of Red Hat Linux 6 on my Dell Optiplex Pentium II. This distribution came with a copy of "Mastering Red Hat Linux6" by Arnan Danesh - Sybex Press , 1999 (recently a friend gave me this book for free). I'm having a problem running Xconfigurator. My ATI Rage Pro video card and the model of my Dell monitor are not listed as choices. I've tried using the custom selection and then inputing the scan and frequency spec that I got from Dell but I can't get it configured unless I go back and select the low VGA selection. This also happens when I try to use Xf86config. The kernel is old (2.2.5-15) so I'm sure it would be best to upgrade the kernel to a new version as well as the modules. My questions are what's the recommended kernel version that's stable and what modules should I upgrade? Would it make better and easier sense to just get a whole new distribution on cd? Actually if there's a good primer on the web that a newbie like myself can refer to I would appreciate that info. Danesh has a chapter on re-configuring the kernel and some web sites on getting the latest source code packages but the chapter is a little sparse and probably out of date. Your advice is appreciated

With that kernel, I would attempt to compile Xfree86. It's not a kernel issue, but a userland(XF86) issue. www.xfree86.org. With redhat linux you can recompile the src rpms by doing: rpm --rebuild *.src.rpm. www.rpmfind.net for the newest version. Install the compiled binaries, reboot, and set your display. Your card and monitor are well supported.

Thanks for that advice. What about the overall merit about upgrading the kernel?