Re: New User trying to get up and running

["C. J. Martoff" <cmartoff@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu>]

I don't know if you need to hear from me...but I installed Red Hat on a
Gateway P120 48MB in two hours, and it works pretty well.  The RPM
installed and configured Netscape Communicator for me without my lifting a
finger, and I use it every day.  I like to tell my students that, "I've
been programming computers longer than you've been alive", but I am not a
UNIX guru.

One thing I don't like about Red Hat is that it seems to have a lot of
what old FORTRAN programmers like me call "dead code"- multiple
packages/programs/commands to do the same thing, some included for
"backward compatibility".  Lots of duplicate database files etc., some of
which apparently are not used by the system, so when you change them
nothing happens.

For example, while getting my TCP-IP networking set up, I concluded that
the GUI tool they include actually doesn't do anything, and if you want to
get your gateway IP etc. set right you have to hand-hack the text files
used by inetd, etc.

Another thing us old fogeys remember dimly is COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION.
Like the five feet of blue notebooks you got when you bought a PDP-11.
Everything there was to know about that machine and the RSX-11 or whatever
OS was in those notebooks.  It may not have been open source but
physics grad students like me had no trouble hand building direct hardware
interfaces to the bus, performing direct device I/O, etc.  Them days is
gone forever.

On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, artworks wrote:

> Hi - 
>  
>    I am now on my 30th installation of Linux and hope to 
> keep this one or maybe  one or two down the line. 
> 
>   My most recent attempt is using Caldera Open Linux 1.3, basically
> trying to rely on the KDE GUI, LISA, etc. 
> 
>   Current issues: 
>  
> 1)   I've been trying to get Netscape running. Iv'e installed Netscape
> 3.0 GOLD - this seems alot cleaner than 4.0 - 'OPTIONS' is 
> only one click down, etc. It seems to load about 20 times slower 
> than the same program running under Windows 95. It also seems to 
> get very eaily 'confused'. If I get impatient I can't click 'STOP
> LOADING', so I try to open a second browser. This seems to crash 
> my 64 MEG system. 
>     My feeling is that LINUX is not properly allocating programs in my
> memory. Any thoughts??
> 
> 2) I am trying to get my 'delete' and 'end' keys to work in KDE
>     and 'startx'. 
> 
>     'Delete' works backward instead of forward. 
>  
>    a)I have looked at 'man xmodmap' and can't make heads or tails of 
>    it, other than to figure out that it only runs in an X-window. 
> 
>    b) ONce I get the right instruction sequence, what file do I store 
>    it in so that it is executed any time I aneter Xwindows or KDE??    
> 
> 
>   I  have been using the email support that they include with 
> Caldera 1.3 package with variable success and have one or two questions 
> and a few days left on their limited 'free' email support policy
> so please feel free to suggest if there is something useful that 
> they may be able to help with. 
> 
>   Also, while I am somewhat more satisfied with the system as configured 
> with Caldera Open Linux 1.3 than I have been with an aborted attempt 
> at RedHat using Linux Pro but have no special loyalties to this system 
> and would scrap it in a second in favor of another system that may 
> be supreior (I have at my disposal discs from Slackware and Debian 
> etc.) - Is there anything useful on these disks and can I get to 
> it without scrapping my current installation ?
>  
> 
> Sincerly,
> Arthur Newmark
> artworks@concetric.net
> 
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> 

============================================================================
C. J. Martoff                                   Phone: (215) 204-3180
Professor of Physics, Temple University         FAX:   (215) 204-5652
Barton Hall, Temple University                          
1900 N. Broad St.                               
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6082                                

Web Site: http://nimbus.temple.edu/~cmartoff    
email: cmartoff@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu

============================================================================


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