red hat & linux

[Drewski]

I've been wanting to learn all about linux for awhile now. I'm taking computer systems technology at College, but we've yet to do any learning on it. I'm running a win2k server at home and I want to convert it to a linux box. But, I know very little of its workings, I was wondering if anyone has links to linux tutorals, or any good information worth reading?

It will be a file server/ftp but I might use it for other things as they come along.

[[AK]StitchJones]

You can install linux on your Windows2000 machine without losing your W2K configuration. As long as you have about 10gb or so of unused hard drive space that is not partitioned, you can install just about any distro. of Linux you want too. Based on what boot loader you chose you will be able to retain your original OS, then at the time of boot up you can choose either Linux or your W2k.

Red-Hat if your paying for the WS license is a good way to go. if you want to stay in the free arena, you will go with Fedora from Red-Hat. Fedora is their free and open Linux distro. I would reco going with that to start off with. It packs alot of tools and toys, plus it's very straight forward to use. a very good distro to get comfortable with in the Linux world.

Start there and learn this early on, depend on the shell interface, don't get too in-depth with the Xwindows (KDE, Gnome) That is how you will most benifit.

Also, go here and buy this book. It is a bible that you cannot live without in the linux world
Linux in a Nutshell
I would also reco these books as well
Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise
Learning Linux

I hope this helps, if you have any other questions please feel free to post them or e-mail me at stchjnes@nycap.rr.com
Enjoy!!

[[AK]StitchJones]

Also, if you do not feel frisky enough to install anything on your machine as of yet. There is a walking linux called Knoppix. It's debian package based that runs in ram so nothing get's installed to the hard drive. That's the safe/safe way to play around with linux. But the performance isn't the hottest thing in the world. But it runs off a CD! how cool is that.

Knoppix
Make sure you pick the english version