Hey there
I've been subscribed to and reading messages on the Alug mailing list now for around 2 and a half months and thought it was about time I said something.
I'm just about a complete newbie to Linux, my experience extends to a failed Red Hat 6.1 graphical installation - it failed because a) I didn't know my hardware well enough and b) because I didn't have a clue what I was doing and didn't know how to configure the thing once it was (semi) installed. I never actually got as far as starting X. I waited for it to start automatically when I booted after I finished the installation (I tried both Gnome and KDE on separate and numerous occasions!) but it didn't so I typed startx and it... flopped.
I'm installing on a PII 300mhz box with a 4Gb hdd, 64 meg of RAM with what I thought was a pretty generic graphics card and little else.
I've been using Windows for years but have wanted to get into Linux for a long time for a number of reasons - one of them is that I'd like to set up a web server I can use for development with PHP and mySQL or another database application.
I'd like your advice on which distro to start with. When I couldn't install redhat I did a bit of reading and found that Mandrake or SuSe might be a good place to start, but a friend is sending me the latest version of Red Hat and Debian (which he thinks I would learn a lot from) on CD - I only have a 56k internet connection.
I have a limited experience of unix commands but apart from that I really don't have a lot of knowledge on this kind of thing and feel a bit like I don't know where to start. Do you think I would benefit by coming to one of the ALUG meetings or joining an IRC session? I live near Peterborough but could probably make a UEA meeting, but travel is a problem caus I'm 16.
Thanks for your time
Ben Francis :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
tola ^/. "there is no spoon"