[TriLUG] good newbie book

[Christian J Hedemark]

Lisa said:
> the good news is the box is running red hat 7.1 and has 32 meg of RAM; the
> bad news is that it's a dell optiplex from 1995 with 4 gig of hd, a
> non-pnp isa ethernet nic, and an ibm 8515 monitor.  (mike, our household
> magician, actually managed to convince x to run at 1024x768 on that
> dinosaur!).

Just an observation, I find that most people who gripe about Linux being
hard to install are folks that install it on weird old hardware like this.
If it's a box that you can install Windows XP on, Linux will probably work
out of the box as well (minus Winmodem support).

> can anyone recommend a good newbie book that won't insult his
> intelligence?  he IS a computer geek - it's just that he's a dos/windows
> computer geek, so a lot of the commands and concepts in linux are new to
> him.  (he found linuxnewbie.com already, but is looking for a book because
> it's easier to read large amounts of information in hardcopy.)

"Using Linux" from Que publishing.  It's geared towards the home user, and
covers the stuff that is going to be more important to that audience (how do
I set up a dialup connection and pick up my email and surf the web?)

> does anyone know why the standard red hat 7.1 server installation doesn't
> install linuxconf by default?  (this one really gets me.  i tend to think
> that people running servers are MORE likely to need to reconfigure bits of
> their system...  altho that may just be my bias, since i run my own
> server.  i don't know whether it's installed by default on a workstation
> install, either.)

What I have heard from Red Hat people is that Linuxconf is going away, to be
replaced by "something better", though I don't know what "something better"
is.  Point him to Webmin, though, and he'll be thrilled.  Show him how he
can change his network config on the Linux box from a browser on his windows
box, and not have to reboot.  That will tickle him.

> thanks in advance for any advice you guys can offer.  situations like this
> make me realize how much i DON'T know about linux yet...  i feel like the
> blind leading the blind.

Well its just that, to borrow terminology from Bob Young, the hood isn't
welded shut.  You can actually see the guts of everything, and have a high
degree of control over it.  That's a double edged sword sometimes, and does
require someone to tinker a bit especially when they are using their OS in
ways that differ from a more typical installation.