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

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Robert

Robert Belknap has been writing online sporadically since 2001. See the colophon for more details.

4 thoughts on “Diving back into linux…”

  1. If you have problems, I suggest looking up your local Linux Users Group, as they can be very helpful.

    It doesn’t even need to be local; LUGOD has a couple mailing lists, one for technical Linux problems. Anyone can join and ask a question, and there are plenty of knowledgeable people on those lists who usually answer.

  2. I have heard nothing but probs with Winmodems and Linux, I think it would be easier to just get an external.
    I have one if you want it.

  3. @1 Thanks for the info, I was actually going to go looking for a LUG near me. Those links will be helpful.

    @2 I have an external modem (2, in fact) laying around. Didn’t have the right cable tho. (Both modems used to be connected to an old Mac Performa) I stopped at an Office Max when I was out doing some errands, and I now have a workig dialup solution for linux. 🙂

    @3 Again, thanks for the info, but I’m not terrible interested in switching ISPs at the moment. 🙂 I will, however, be looking at the broadband options from my current ISP. If I’m forced to switch it would proabably be to attbi, since I can verify that their broadband offerings are availble at my current location. (chutta lives above me and uses attbi.)

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