Forking the discussion - attempting to update a laptop running redhat... RE: Any Certified Laptops In The Future?

[m.roth2006 at rcn.com]

Larry,

>Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:53:27 -0500
>From: "Virden, Larry W." <lvirden at cas.org>  
>From: mark
>
>> *snort*
>
>Sorry to make you snort this morning - hope you didn't have a mouthful
>of coffee at the time...

<g>
>
>> What do you want/need on the system? Are you compiling, and/or running
>a d/b, and/or running apache, or do you have some proprietary bloatware
>that eats resources?
>
>Well, ultimately, what I want to do with this machine (once I see if I
>can add some memory and perhaps get a bit larger disk drive) is to a)
>use it with a wifi card to surf the internet, b) compile some C
>applications, c) do some development in Tcl.

All of that should be no problem with that RAM & h/d. You can always add another drive - all my home systems have two, though frequently, one's an "old, tiny" (4G! - I'm so old, I remember being willing to kill to get a 10M drive) that I use solely for swap.
>
>> Remember, you can still d/l a linux that runs on a 486, and maybe even
>a 386.
>
>Hmm - I don't think I ever knew that, so I can't remember it.

Ah - so you don't know the history of Linux. The short version: in '89? '91? a Finnish college student named Linux Torvalds didn't like what was available for his 386 (Minix), and started coding his own version of Unix. He put it out on the Net, 5,478,683 other folks out there jumped in to help, and here we are....

> Perhaps
>there is some place a level 1 novice can go to learn the basics like
>that?

I'd look at some of the FAQs. There might even be one on RedHat's website....

     mark