Newbie questions

[Tim Burgess]

Hi,

I've just got a Red Hat 7.3 system going on a Sony VAIO laptop using SpeakUp
and a DecTalk Express.  I've got some, inevitable, questions:

1 - I ran sndconfig and my sound card was recognised and played the sample
sound - do I need to install alsa as well?  If so, why so?

2 - I have an internal modem and I've downloaded Linux drivers for it, but
these require the kernel sources and a recompile.  I've installed the kernel
source package from the SpeakUp modified Red Hat site (since this is the
kernel I've currently got installed - 2.4.18-10spk), but I'm now floundering
as I expected to find a /usr/src/linux-2.4.18-10spk directory and there
isn't one.  What I do have is a linux-2.4.18-3 (created from my original Red
Hat media before I installed the modified 2.4.18-10spk) and a directory
called redhat.  I know I can delete the linux-2.4.18-3 directory but where
do I find my new source tree?  There's lots of stuff that might suit in the
redhat directory, but it's been a long, long time since I recompiled a
kernel and I don't want to blow it now, so can somebody offer me some
pointers?

  3 - My machine identifies itself as "localhost" and I'd like to change
this - I've tried using the hostname command, but the setting doesn't seem
to get preserved.  My machine has a fixed IP address and participates in my
ethernet LAN.

4 - Once I get my modem up and running, how do I configure Internet access?
The Red Hat Getting Started Guide only refers to graphics mode
configuration?

Many thanks in advance to anybody willing to help.  Thanks anyway to Janina
for getting me this far - she knows what a battle it's been!

Tim