[lug] new to Linux

[John Dollison]

Aaron -
I'm pretty much a newbie myself.  I'm guessing that you probably don't know 
much about using the vi text-editor, or where all your configuration files 
are, or anything else yet.  A lot of people will tell you to RTFM (Read The 
F***ing Manual), but at this point you probably don't know where to find 
most of the manuals, and won't understand what you read there, anyway.  And 
Linux books are often just big reference books for advanced users, and 
they're out-of-date as soon as they are printed.  I'd suggest three things 
to help you get the ball rolling:

1.  Take a Unix / Linux course at a local college, or at the very least get 
a step-by-step Linux workbook.  There are some good online tutorials, too; 
just do a Google search for "linux tutorial" or something similar.  Do all 
the activities they tell you to; this will lay a good groundwork for 
understanding Linux.

2.  Get RedHat 8.0 or Mandrake 9.0 (I like Mandrake), either one will do a 
better job than RH 7.3 of detecting and configuring your hardware 
automatically.  During the install, it will ask you if you want KDE or 
Gnome; I'd suggest installing both.  This way you should end up with a fully 
functional system with a GUI to learn on, and then you can start playing 
with it and modifying it as you learn more.

3.  Attend all the BLUG and Hackers Society meetings, they're great for 
meeting people and asking questions.

Anyway, that's my 3 cents.

John D.



----Original Message Follows----
From: "Aaron Vogel" <aaron at vogel.nu>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 00:38:52 -0600

I have installed RH7.3 and can boot to Windows and Linux seemingly alright.
When I get to Linux I type in my name and password and then type in 'startx'
to attempt to get to GNOME because I am helpless in the text version.
However, after i enter that in, I get a stream of text and finally an error
message that go something on the order of:


.

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