Newbie Questions

[Alexander Grekhov]

Mister Clever wrote:

> 1) Hardware compatibility list.  I'm assuming this isn't going to be 
> like windows, i.e. buy a twenty-dollar no-name ethernet card and it's 
> going to include a driver.

You'd be surprised. In 5 years running Linux in production environment I 
excountered very few unsupported devices, most of them rather old.

> Where do I find a list of hardware that's 
> supported under Linux?  Is there a URL?  I want to make sure that as I 
> purchase pieces they're actually going to work with little difficulty.

The good place to start would be here:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/hardware.html

> 2) Hardware specs.  To be honest, I was a little stunned by the hardware 
> requirements to run Fedora (memory / processor / hard drive space).  
> Obviously I can't pick up an old P166 at a swap meet and expect it to 
> work.  What are the reasonable specs for a PC to run Linux?  Or is there 
> a URL with this info?

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/

> 3) One of the things I'd like to do with my Linux box is put it in my 
> Dlink Router's DMZ and run an FTP server on it so I can upload and 
> download to my LAN at home via my DSL connection.  Will "Fedora" include 
> everything I need to do this (from a software perspective), i.e. FTP 
> server and firewall (?)

Yes.

> or will I need something else.

Read docs and set up config files to suit your needs.

Regards,

Alexander