Distros i have tried out..

My tryst with linux started in June this year...It was the middle of my (pretty long) summer holidays...i had heard a lot about it and had a taste of it the previous year in college... i had always been fascinated by the concept of open source...and linux being the ultimate in open source, i sure wanted to give it a try...the comp i was gonna be trying it on was my home comp..a pretty outdated one..P3 1.3Ghz, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB HDD...i first had to do lots of convincing with my sister who was vehemently opposed to the idea of me installing another OS...and then came the question of the distro...i enquired with 2 of my friends and read as much as i could on the internet..one thing about me is that i always love to have the latest in everything...and so, after quite some comparing between the "good" and "bad" of each distro, i came to the conclusion that FC3 would fit the bill best..because of these reasons...1-i could get the cd easily from my friend and dint have to sit and download it; 2-he told me that it wasnt either too easy(like suse) or too tough(like slackware) so that i could get a good hang of what linux is all about; 3-i did read on many forums that red hat/FC is the best to start with...

i tried installing it..some error came after 2 initial screens of language and keyboard choosing..i became a bit apprehensive but a bit of searching on the net got me the answer..i had to make a floppy disk with some extra drivers and load them during the installation...did that and the installation went off fine though i was confused (like i guess every newbie is) at the partitioning step.. was able to get the installation done..took around an hour and a half..felt like i had climbed Mt.Everest after that!! i reboot the system expecting to see some good news...alas, it was disappointment that was writ large on my face as X server getting started up...the graphics looked screwed up right from the beginning..the loading window looked gone when i clicked on show details..and after that, when gnome booted up, the menus dint come up either...moving my mouse gave me some semblance of feeling that they appear...only to disappear once they went off...and also, when i tried configuring my modem, it said modem not detected...painful :( so, off i went to linuxquestions which i found to be a very good forum..a post there elicited responses like try a different window manager as my ram was too low for gnome or kde(which only looked more awful). nice start to my linux experience i thought..it also made me realise that my comp was just not good enough for the latest.i downloaded source tarball of xfce but even after lots of trying, wasnt able to get it working properly..i thought, well let me end this exercise in futility and switch back to some old version..

i downloaded the RH9 iso images from insti server and decided to give it a try. i also got RH8 cds from my friend who said RH9 might give some problems...thankfully, nothing of that sort happened..though RH9 booted much slower than Win98 that was there on my comp, it was pleasing to see that it booted properly and the graphics was working good albeit a bit slow..this was around the end of july...so i still had a month to work on linux and learn..and learn i did..i started off with this wonderful ebook that i found, The Linux Newbie Guide. it was written in a very easy to understand language especially for a complete newbie like me. i was able to understand most of the concepts right out of it. it also made me to go ahead and try out lots of things. i did things ranging from setting up cron jobs to making permanent aliases..which looked great progress for a newbie like me. the free time made me want to learn html properly(of which i knew very little) and then go ahead with php and sql.. W3Schools proved to be a great place for this...actually, i had started this before i had installed linux. so, i now wanted to try it out...this was when i also came upon this wonderful piece of thing called xampp, a great and easy to install and use combination of apache, mysql, php and loads of other stuff. installation is as simple as a single tar command..nothing more to fiddle with..no configuration files to edit..no makes and no make installs. no dependencies, no nothing!! i got started with my php skills..i managed to land a ebook of some 15 books on php and mysql from the insti lan..more than enough to learn 'em. i found the dummies book was very good but within a hundred pages or so, i realised that with my knowledge of c++ that i had gained in high school, this book was not for me..i needed to go into something more advanced. so, i shifted to learning php 5 by david sklar and also, started learning by reading the php manual page by page..i learnt a lot and did a few pages too...forms were the most challenging part. i am happy i was able to write a complete form page on my own at the end of that lesson. coming back to linux, the experience was becoming better and more enjoyable day by day as i made new discoveries every second moment. also, i got the same modem not detected problem..a bit of googling told me that it could be a win modem and so, special drivers need to be installed to get it to work. so, i tried a lot using some tool that gets info about my modem (dont remember the exact website)..and it took me many places and forums and loads of people ready to help me out. then one day, i thought, why not just ignore this error and go ahead and see what happens...and lo and behold, it worked!! i was like a bit mad at myself but such things do happen in life..

thus ends the first part of my tryst with linux...i could proudly say at the end of the holidays that i knew a lot more about linux than before.