I want to install the ABSOLUTE minimum that rh9 requires. I want to be able to download and install the latest things such as apache, mysql, perl, etc on my own. I can't figure out though if I need to install cpp, gcc, perl etc (developer stuff) from the install cd's. What advice do you all have? any pitfalls i need to be aware of?

I chose to remove completely every package during the install process and I was left with a nice 450 meg (app) install. but, my command prompt was sorta different (it didn't show my current folder) and i couldn't install mysql due to the lack of perl...It's been pretty fun but i know there has to be a good medium ground that I use to save myself some time and headaches.

what install schemes does someone else use regularly or has had lots of success with?

bear in mind that I'm a newbie here and i am wanting to install everything manually to learn but i don't wanna have to do so much that it makes the learning curve too steep

You install the minimum nuber of packages. Then when you need to additional packages just install them from the cd by typing
rpm -ivh packagename.rpm
If it say it needs another package for this package to install then install it first and so on!

If you are going to use Redhat 9, I am not sure whether you will be able to get the latest apache, mysql and php because Redhat 9 and below are now discontinued distros with no more updates from Redhat. You probably would be better off installing something like Fedora or RHEL clones like CentOS.

well, i know apache 2 works cause i've seen it on rh9...i tried fedora but it's too darn slow! i'm constantly toying with it though.