Zen Internet Support Forum

I am a novice,n00b or what ever you wish to call me on linux. However after some good advice from Roseway. I have at this moment in time got what I see as the distro that will finally allow me to ditch the windows system and move over to Linux.

I know some Linux pro's might find Suse 10.2 a bit n00bish, however from a novices point of view if you feel comfy that's 1/2 the battle. I have it set up exactly to my personal specifications and now I feel comfy with it I will be able to start playing with it a lot more and thus increasing (hopefully) my Linux knowledge.

I messed around with earlier version of Redhat and Suse but from my point of view I see this new set of distro's as a sort of comming of age.

I don't quite grasp the fact that it's free to download off the internet though, as the functionality I have is exactly the same as the functionality I use/ed in windows yet no where have I paid for anything.

Doug

Doug:

I don't quite grasp the fact that it's free to download off the internet though, as the functionality I have is exactly the same as the functionality I use/ed in windows yet no where have I paid for anything.

Doug

I don't know that anyone "quite grasps it", Doug! But the plain fact is that the GNU/Linux/Open Source movement has since Day 1 made the results of its efforts freely (both free of cost and free of restrictions) available to all.

SuSE, Red Hat and other companies making a living from Linux have got their profits from "adding value" to the freely available software --  by putting it on CDs and providing printed manualswhich you can buy (pretty cheap) in a box, by offering a paid support service, by overseeing installation and system maintenance for other companies whi decide to "go Linux", etc. More recently there have been tie-ups between Linux companies and other big operators, such as between SuSE and Novell. Don't forget that "heavy" computing has traditionally been Unix-based (DOS/Windows couldn't cope with the load and efficiency requirements until, possibly, quite recently), and so e.g. database software firms like Oracle and Informix have also supported Linux since this helps them enlarge their own market. And so on.

At the same time, setups like Ubuntu continue to produce their stuff in a more "pro bono" spirit. And there are thousandss of people who donate their spare time to develpiing Linux and applications to run on it; many of these do so as a spin-off from their "day job"--just have a look at for instance

http://www.r-project.org

to see the constellations of academics and industry professionals who clearly contribute vast amounts of time in this way. This of course benefits their employers as well.

It's great to know that you're making progress, Doug. I don't think I would describe Suse as n00bish, but it does have a lot of user-friendly features which make it a good choice for a starter. But after using Linux for about 10 years I still use Suse on my main 'serious' machine, because it does what I want without a lot of fuss. There's a lot of fun to be had though (if you're that way inclined) in trying out other distros on a spare machine or spare partition. There's no shortage of choices.

Eric 

Absolutely, I am at the moment getting mysql up and running. I think I have enabled it in startup as I can log on to it via terminal. I am going to have a go at looking for the mySQL admin and client gui. and play around with that for a while.