Diving back into linux…

I have a passing familiarity with linux. I kind of have to, seeing as how most of the web sites I maintain (both work and personal) are hosted on linux boxes. I want to learn a lot more. I’ve played around with a couple different distributions over the last few years. hooloovoo.net started life as an old HP vectra funning FreeBSD. (That box, minus the HD, has been riding around in the trunk of my car since 1999 – I wonder if anything on it still works…)

I got ahold of a copy of RedHat 8.0 last night. I stuck the 4gig HD from the old FreeBSD system into my current PC and set up a dual-boot Win98/RH8.0 machine. The setup went smoothly, and I think I’ll have a lot of fun mucking about in this version of RH, but I won’t be able to do anything “useful” until I get an internet connection working.

I know that my internal modem is a winModem, and while I might be able to get it working, it’s probably going to be a pain in the ass. I’be been poking around a bit online, and I think I have a couple of solutions, but I need to double-check the modem’s chipset to make sure I’m grabbing the correct RPMs and such.

I’m almost tempted not to bother, and just dig out an old 56k external modem and be done with it. Or convince my wife we really do need broadband. 🙂

-Hool