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Technology Stocks : LINUX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: g_m10 who wrote (753)	12/17/1998 11:59:00 PM
From: Mitch Blevins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2615

Yes definitely get an older, second computer. Trying to dual boot is very frustrating when you are learning because you have to keep going back to windows to get some info off the net, then rebooting to try it.... no good. The cheapest pentium you can find will do fine for a web server. It will saturate your cable modem before you run out of power with a Linux/Apache setup. You _can_ get apache for Windows, but I find it akward, and the performance will not be as good. Forget about PHP and MySQL. I had made the assumption that you were already running and familiar w/ linux. Just get linux running first and connected to the net. Then, when you are comfortable, set up Apache. Try some simple CGI/Perl scripts on it. Then, later you can get PHP/MySQL. Your linux/windows box can share a net connection easily, and you don't even need a monitor for the linux box except for the initial installation and setup (unless you want to run X apps). As far as getting help, the noise/signal ratio is very high on the general comp.os.linux.* newsgroups. I would suggest subscribing to the mailing list of whichever distro you get. Both Redhat and Debian have a good mailing list help. Also, if you ever use IRC, you can usually get help from #debian or #redhat. But back to the original question... where to start with reading? You can't swing a dead cat these days without hitting a linux book on the shelves, but I don't know enough to recommend one over the other. Just pick one that gives the basics of unix/linux, and jump in. Much easier to learn it as you actually do it. The online help is very good in linux for basic commands. Just type 'man man' and start from there. Concentrate on getting something to work, ask questions on mailing lists, and keep at it until it does work. Also, spend some time at linux.org Good luck - keep us posted. -Mitch