[SWLUG] Re: Newbie alert!

[Glenn Booth]

Hi,

On 8/16/05, steve at nexusuk.org <steve at nexusuk.org> wrote:
> 
> I think I'm in a similar position, having used Linux from before the time 
> of the modern GUI configurators for everything - modern distributions are 
> just so easy (although most of the time I still hack configs by hand 
> rather than using the GUI tools).

Ditto - for me, the GUI config tools never seem to quite get the job done. I
decided to build a music server after buying a Squeezebox, and I 
had a copy of Mandrake 10.1 lying around, so I used it. Trying to
configure Samba using the Drake setup was a joke. Same for (of
all things) the mouse  in X. I ended up having to  do lots of reading,
and editing smb.conf by hand (that's a good thing, BTW). I'm still 
having problems with the file permissions though.

> I think using Linux _with other people around to answer questions_ is the 
> key to learning it.  

Bingo! The main reason I keep building Linux machines then unbuilding
them again is that I keep finding little niggles that just won't go away.
After a bunch of howto's and google searches, I get despondant. My
latest is a mouse driver that has to be reloaded every time I restart
Xorg. Google is full of posts from people with fixes, but they don't
work for me, and I can't work out why!

Fortunately, I seem to have found a LUG with people who know what
they're doing, so maybe there's hope... if I ask nicely.

Regards,
Glenn.