[lug] where do i start

[Nate Duehr]

Hi Luke, 

You'll probably find that Linux is very documented, but not always in
the places you'd expect.  The first place to start with any Unix program
is to get the system loaded and use "man", the manual viewer...

Other resources might be: www.linuxdoc.org, www.linux.com, and whatever
distribution you decide to go with should have useful stuff on their
homepage as well, some even have their own Q&A databases and knowledge
bases.

One of the things that makes your question difficult to answer is that
there are so many things you can do with any modern OS (be it Windows
*or* Linux) that "simple" linux network, may not really be all that
simple.  What are you planning on setting up?  What do you need it to
do?

Part of setting up a network of computers out in "the real world"
(although we all wonder sometimes if school wasn't better... heh heh!)
is coming up with a reasonable set of goals and then shooting them down
one at a time.

So what do you want this network to do?  How many computers are on it?
What kinds of hardware?  Is there access to a high-speed Internet
connection, or dial-up?  Are all the machines going to share that one
link to the outside world?  Do you need a firewall running on the
machine that acts as a gateway?  Are you going to allow file-sharing? 

There's all sorts of questions to answer before you start your set-up,
but these should give you an idea on how to get started.

Start with a few smaller things if you're uncomfortable coming up with
an overall plan for the school network -- like maybe just getting the
machine loaded with the Linux operating system and learning about how it
works first -- maybe set up a few services on it like a web server, or
Samba (Windows) filesharing.  Then use a building-block strategy to go
from there.

So let us know how you're doing -- sometimes after someone gets started
and they say... "Well, I have this working and that working..." it's
easier to tell how much they're picking up on their own and how much
help they need doing some things.

There's a lot of folks on the list with different backgrounds and
different preferences for what Linux distribution they like to run, so
if you stick to one of the more popular ones you should be able to find
help here -- just holler.

Good luck, and enjoy the journey you're about to start on -- you really
never finish learning about computers -- there's always more to learn.

On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 07:26:43PM -0600, luke p wrote:
> Hello,
> i'm a student at BHS and am good friends with our sysadmin at school. as i'm 
> sure most of you know, running a win2000 server and all the extras to make 
> it work for a large system can cost you an arm and leg, also, schools just 
> don't get that much $$ for help. so i was wondering where i should start off 
> if i wanted to draft a plan and switch our system from a windows system to a 
> linux. or are there sites of a simple linux network all documented from 
> start to end?
> -luke
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug

-- 
Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com>

GPG Key fingerprint = DCAF 2B9D CC9B 96FA 7A6D AAF4 2D61 77C5 7ECE C1D2
Public Key available upon request, or at wwwkeys.pgp.net and others.