another newbie

[Ron Kassen]

Buddy,
I downloaded the bigslack version from the net.  Can I just unzip this into
the \linux directory, and with the linuz.spk kernel will it still load and
run ok as long as I have the bat file setup correctly?  Do I have to know
some cryptic language to tell this rc.modul file what hardware I have or is
it pretty straight forward?  How do I know how to tell linux, for example,
that I have a 3com 3c905b network card and an ensonic audio pci sound card?
Will it find and install my video card correctly?  Going back: When I get to
the login scree and type in root and press enter, am I in?  Then I can do
the passwd to change the root password and do the adduser to create my user
account?

Another note:
I tried to download the book off the net about linux installation and
getting started, but I have to download each page individually, and where I
found it compressed, it was a .tar.gz file, which I have to work with in
linux.  Any easier way to get these docs?
Thanks!!!

RK

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-admin at braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-admin at braille.uwo.ca]On Behalf Of Buddy Brannan
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 9:25 AM
To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: another newbie


Hi Ron,

First thing you'll want to do is create a user account. No, scratch
that. The first first thing you should do is change the root password with
passwd

After you've done that, *then* create a user account, from which you
should do most things. Doing everything as root is a bad
idea. (I.E. typing rm -rf * at the root directory is bad if you're
root.) You will create the user account with
adduser

Slackware's pretty nice in that it will step you through the account
creation, asking all the relevant questions.

Yes! You can do your CD burning, listen to MP3's and wavs, record wavs, do
Email, and surf the Web. (Remember...Linux was really *created* over the
Internet.) I'm not sure what Email program Zipspeak comes with--I'm
running the full Slackware distribution--but I use one called elm, and a
lot of folks use pine, while some swear by mutt. pico is a good basic text
editor. vi is the default in a lot of cases, but it's fairly arcane; if
you find yourself in vi, just type
:q!
and you'll get out of that.

Right. I don't know what to tell you about converting from Micro$haft
Lookout!, but you *can* do Email. Some pages don't work in lynx, and
you'll have to compile in SSL support--but you don' have to do that
immediately. Most things, however, work great with lynx, and I actually
prefer it for in-depth reading. About the only thing I use Windows for
these days is the odd OCR job and my online banking program, which runs in
Windows. Absolutely everything else I do in Linux.

I'm certainly not the most experienced person here, there are lots of
those on this list, but I'll certainly be glad to help if I can. Hope this
helps.


--
Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV        | And if the ground yawned,
Email: davros at ycardz.com     | I'd step to the side and say,
Phone: (972) 889-8147        | "Hey ground! I'm nobody's lunch!"
Voice mail: (877) 791-5298   | --Eddie From Ohio

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