newest of the newbies

[Doug Lawlor]

Welcome to the list.  

On Mon, Apr 15, 2002 at 01:57:54PM -0700, Rob wrote:
>      I guess my immediate questions are, I have a dsl connection, how
> hard will it be to configure so that I may use it.  

Not hard at all,if you just have a normal DHCP connection it should
be a matter to just tell your system to use DHCP instead of a static IP
address which is the default.   You do this in Slackware 8 by setting
a line in your '/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1' boot script as follows:

DHCP="yes"            # Use DHCP ("yes" or "no")

If you have a PPOE setup there are ways of going about that to, but I
have never done this.  

> Also, does Linux
> have a built in Telnet client and IRC client like my old Unix shell
> used to?  

Sure does, and good ones too.  I'm sure much better and more
accessible than those of your
current operating system.  

> How hard is it to find programs like Lynx and Pine?

Lynx and Pine both ship with Slackware 8 and I can be
reasonably certain Lynx comes with Redhat and Debian as well.  

>      I know this is an established list with people already well into
> the use of Linux and I hate to bog it down with a bunch of newbie
> questions, but I looked all over and could not find a "Linux for blind
> newbies" list or I would have gone there lol.

Don't worry about that.  You will find that people talk about a lot
of Linux issues as well as other topics on occasion.  

>      I just basically want to see how people feel about using this
> exciting alternative to the dreaded Windows. *grin*

I like it very much.  Like you, I missed the good old days of Unix and
as you get to know Linux better you will find lots of ways to do things
much quicker than you could do in Windows.  

> 
>           Rob

--
Doug Lawlor <dlawlor at roadrunner.nf.net>