hey, i decided to start learning alittle nix so I grabbed a copy of Vortual PC since redhat wouldnt install on my old comp from 1992 since the CD-Rom dont seem to be bootable. Anyway, I choose redhat as my OS, this is a good platform for a novice, isnt it? Some dude told me to run slackware but I heard thats for the pros ;o

Yep, it's one of the best.
if you realy want it easy, trye lindows, just kidding.
Running it on a virtual pc will be kindoff a drag, laggy...

no, good choise.

try mandrake..
the reason i chose Mandrake over RHL is that RHL cripples most of the apps it ships with itself...same is the case with Suse.
Never tried Slackware though

./CR

probably a stupid question but does the virtual pc software see
your cd rom. had the same problems with vmware where the
config was simply wrong.
normally if the host os sees the cdrom and it is properly
configured the cd should boot ... since there are different
boot mechanisms for virtual pc's
regards,
u.

When i was learning nix, I grabbed a knoppix distro. I am really into BSD now. So i suggest http://www.freesbie.org/ . RedHat was the shit, like right after 9.2 came out because it had an awesome auto-update engine. One problem, RedHat is no longer working on making an OS for the common user. I would look into Mandrake, or the mandrake live cd.

One major reason to get FreeBSD is the ports system. When you start to install stuff on linux and there is a dependency, you might want to hurt something. Where as in FreeBSD it comes with a large list of ports. Here is an example of installing Apache using the port system:

Locate apache | less (you might want to pipe it into grep ports)
cd / user/ports/www/apache13 (where i found it using locate)
make install clean

THATS IT, it automatically downloads compiles and installs all dependency, such a time saver its not even funny.

Regardless of you OS, I suggest reading a book on shell programming. I prefer bash. At the very lease read the first few chapters, it tells you about pipe lines and useful unix programs. You can find e-books online, if you are still using your windows box download emule, there are a lot of e-books there.

I also suggest FluxBox as a window manager, it is really fast and doesn't use a lot of resources. http://www.fluxbox.org/

peace

I got a monitor error with Virtual PC or umm looks like the colors scheme is (filtered),, its like its 256colors and I cant see shit. Im thinking on just (filtered) Virtual PC and install it on this comp, will I still be able to boot windows flawless?