What a great site! Very happy to see Newbie forum. Just installed Red Hat Linux 7.3 after many tries. Now working to learn Emacs. Background includes several classes in Unix many years ago.
Thanks,
Joe

Don't you think it is better to learn the text editor that matches with you name? http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/

Welcome to LQ.

Thanks Anisha, you're right Joe-for-Joe. Interesting editor. My book lists "personality" types of joe - jstar, jmacs, jpico. It's all over my head but looks like fun. Thanks, Joe.

Whats the reason behind installing such an old version of RedHat? Old hardware?

and as they say, centos is a free version of Red Hat, any special reasons for not going for that option?

Partly because of a text book 'Guide to Linux Installation and Administration' used in college class, partly because the price was only(?) $30.00 on Ebay, partly because of ignorance of better software choices, partly because of old hardware. I am happy to be on LQ where I get useful, helpful and timely input. Thanks, Joe.

Thank you for the link to Centos. I will try that. Recently learned that Red Hat Inc, stopped supporting Ver 7.3 seven years ago. Bummer! It's about time to update. Thanks again, Joe.

Do you have a desire to learn Linux? If yes, then you can go for Slackware, if not, *buntus are there for you!
also, http://distrowatch.com/

Yes Anisha, this is a learning process for me as opposed to production. I just need a small, basic shell program to study scripting and programming. No windows, multimedia, etc. Think I'll look at slackware. Thanks for the suggestion.

Then you should look for Arch too

Thanks Anisha, just bought one of the Arch CDs. I'll let you know how it goes.

Here are the distro foras, in case of problems post in the respective forum: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...stributions-5/

To add to what Anisha said above, keep in mind that many distributions also have their own dedicated forums outside of LQ, e.g. Arch and Ubuntu. Slackware is one exception to this rule, however; LQ sort of serves as Slackware's official support forum.

Welcome to LQ.

You can give up ebay and download current Linux distros from the web in *.iso format (see the LQ Download Linux page), burn them to CD/DVD, and install them at no cost other than the cost of the blank media.

The one caution is to make sure you are using your burning software's "burn from image" tool so you don't just copy the *.iso to disk. I've made that mistake myself, long after I knew better.

My suggestion would be to update a more recent distro immediately, learn your way around it, then start experimenting. Linux has improved drastically since the Fedora 7 days.

Also, I second Anisha's suggestion. If you want to learn how Linux works, as opposed to just use Linux, get Slackware. Slackware always works, it never breaks, it expects you to RTFM, and it takes no prisoners.

The first day I installed it, I installed it three times before I was happy with myself.

It is actually quite simple to use, as long as you RTFM.

And once you get the hang of Slackware, no other Linux distro can intimidate you.

Old hardware is likely not an issue. I've run Slack 12.2 on a IBM PC 300 (that's one of the original Pentiums) and have v. 13 on a P3 with 256 MB RAM right now--it's a little slow but otherwise quite functional.

If you want to learn $distro, install $distro. If you want to learn Linux, install Slackware.

*This is not an original, but I don't remember who first said it or where. It's still the truth, though.