[sclug] What to do with a Linux newbie like me

[Will Dickson]

Antony Bartlett wrote:

>Perhaps start them off on something simpler than
>trying to install and configure what is by all accounts
>a bloody awkward ASDL modem to get started
>with (BT Voyager USB ADSL Modem - anyone else
>have one?)
>

>Trouble is, there's very little worth doing on a
>computer without an internet connection, these days
>(this posted from Outlook Express :-( on my other
>partition btw).
>

This may be an utterly impractical suggestion, but if you can scrape
together any kind of second host with functioning USB then my answer
would be to put, say, Smoothwall on that, and hopefully let its automatic
hardware configuration sort out your modem for you. As a bonus,
this allows you to make mistakes with your main machine (such as using
virus propagation tools on its other partition :-) without fear of being
portscanned and 0wned as a result.

FWIW our connection, (static IP, which I expect makes matters worse than
for dynamic IP) gets probed about once every 20 minutes or so, mostly by
worms judging from the patterns.

> 
> 
> Oh well; nothing like trying to use a new operating
>system (Mandrake 9.1) to make you feel about two
>inches tall.
>

I never got the hang of Mandrake myself. My impression of it (several 
years ago,
so things may well have improved by now) was that it was incredibly pretty
when things were proceeding along the straight-and-narrow, but that it 
folded
up and died as soon as anything unexpected happened.

Will.