new to redhat

[Bob McClure Jr]

Hi Johan,

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 08:28:37PM +0200, Johan Scheepers wrote:
> Good day,
> 
> I have ordered some RH 9 cd's.

Umm, why?  RH 9 is extremely antique and no longer supported.  That
means you can't get any security (or any other) updates for it and
will be vulnerable to crackers.  Furthermore, if you machine is very
recent, it may not support the hardware very well.

> Done some home work on google.
> Some knowledge of debian squeeze and opensuse 11.3.

I've no experience with either of those.

> Being a pensionar I do have the time to fiddle around with different
> distros.
> May need some assistance along the redhat way.

If you want to mess around with Red-Hat-ish distros, you want either
Fedora (version 14 is just out) <http://fedoraproject.org/> or CentOS
(v5.5 is current, and v6 will be out soon) <http://www.centos.org/>.
Fedora is the cutting edge trial area for what will become a real Red
Hat release.  CentOS is the free variant of the current Red Hat, and
is nearly exactly like RH except for the branding and (of course)
support.

If you are new to Linux, especially if coming from Windoze, you might
want to consider Ubuntu <http://www.ubuntu.com/> which is a derivative
of Debian, but is geared more for the Windoze escapee.  It has more
recent stuff than CentOS, but more stable, and for the most part, Just
Works.

All three distros mentioned can be set up to auto-update, so that you
always have the latest and most secure stuff.

> Regards
> Johan


Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
bob at bobcatos.com             http://www.bobcatos.com
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the
new has come!  2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)