David Roth wrote:
>Hi:
>
>Linux is a mystery to me. A colleauge just gave me RedHat 7.0 - its been
>installed with all its options for servers, etc... and I have restarted to a
>login then a dos prompt? I understand there is a windows type GUI for the
>OS? Can someone tell me what to type at the prompt to load the GUI? or a
>brief overview of the OS and its GUI's? Web service is our end result and
>possibly email service.
>
>We would eventually like to migrate from Win2K and possibly host our own
>sites, but I'm at square one with Linux.
>
>Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
Well, the first quiestion to you is what type of installation did you
do? Did you actually just pick the "server" option when you installed
the system? (certainly sounds like it.) If you did, then the X WIndowing
system might not be installed in your system. "After all," says Unix
Wisdom, "Who needs a GUI when you're doing administration?" At any rate,
the way to check for that is to go into your system, log in at the
prompt (FYI: it is NOT a DOS prompt - in fact it's what DOS was TRYING
to be), and trye in "startx." If you have X (the Windowing system)
installed and configured (here's the key), then you'll get dropped into
a GUI. If not. then depending on your system's response,you'll be able
to determiner whether you have it configured or even installed.
You can probably find more information on some of the basic questions in
the following places:
http://www.firstlinux.com
http://www.linuxnewbie.org
http://www.linuxvoodoo.com
http://www.linux.ie/newusers/beginners-linux-guide/ (info here's a bit
dated, though - as is your version of Red Hat).
http://new.linuxnow.com/tutorial/preface.html
http://www.linux.com
My recomendation to you is to go to your nearest book store and grab
yourself one of the wonderful documentation manuals out there. In fact,
there's one that just came out that I forgot the nam of, but it's a VERY
bright Orage book dealing with Red Hat 7.2 - there's no way to miss it.
Just ask the sometimes friendly bookstore people to find it for you.
There's also "Red Hat: The complete reference" by McGraw Hill, one of my
favorites. These can get your to a good start and serve for great, long
term refference guides.
P.S. <sidenote that can get you more confused>
There's one thing about Linux that you're gonna find odd at first -
there is no "Gerenal GUI." In fact, there are actually over 33 different
graphical user interfaces. The most popular are the desktop environments
GNOME (http://www.gnome.org and http://www.ximian.com for the
easy-to-install (free) commercial version - which I'm using right now
:-) and the K Desktop Environment (http://www.kde.org). KDE looks more
like what you're probably used to with Windows, where as GNOME is a bit
more malleable (mine's more "Mac" like, though I can make it look more
CDE like or more Windows Explorer like if I so desire). Then there are
the more popular window managers WIndowMaker (part of the GNUstep
project), Blackbox, Enlightenment (awesome malleability, but you need
some power behind that sucker), IceWM and more. Once you get the hang of
if, you can actually start mixing and matching, The KDE pannel at the
bottom, Enlightenment as your window manager and all running with of
the Nautilus file manager (part of Ximian's GNOME package). Weird wild
stuff...
</sidenote that can get you more confused>
Have fun, and keep the questions commin'.
Gnorb
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