Re: Help!

Alice E. Peters wrote:

> I'm still not sure about the distro --- or flavor. Someone mentioned
> Mandrake and that sounds familiar; however, maybe Gnome is what you're
> looking for. That's what runs my programs, I think. I use Mozilla for
> a browser, and Open Office for a word processor.
> 
> Steve, what is a "console session?" (See, I really am a newby!) 
> 
> Russell, is your suggestion to be typed into a browser search, or ???
> 
> How do I find a Mandrake box? I think I only see that name when I reboot.

Welcome, newbie! Having been one myself, at one time, I recognize some 
of your confusion. A lot of jargon has developed in the computer world 
in general, and the Linux branch of that world certainly has its share. 
So, my apologies for repeating things you may have already learned, but 
here are a number of terms that I've seen in this thread that appear to 
be strange to you:

distro:

Distribution. Linux is an operating system that is "distributed" by many 
different organizations. Red Hat, SuSE, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, and 
Slackware, are just some of the distributors I'm aware of. Each of those 
groups have their own unique way of distributing the software, and that 
is what the other folks on this list are trying to find out. Where you 
got the computer may help them figure that out. For example, if you got 
it through FreeGeek, you are probably running a Mandrake distribution. 
Of course, if you do see the name Mandrake when you reboot, this also 
indicates that you are running the Mandrake distribution.

box:

Computer. I'm not sure where this bit of slang came from, but as near as 
I can tell, it means the computer. I'm guessing that it describes the 
case that holds the motherboard, disk drives, etc., and that the term 
means the case and its contents. Sometimes, when someone has multiple 
machines, they will refer to their Gentoo box, or their Debian box, or 
maybe their Intel box, or their AMD box.

console session:

As the other folks have said, this is a way to interact with your 
computer's operating system without using icons, but just typing in 
commands and getting text responses to them. Since you're using Gnome, 
you should have an icon that looks something like a footprint, and when 
you click on that icon, you get a list of programs, or other lists. 
Search though those lists until you find something like Applications > 
System Tools > Terminal. When you click on terminal, a window will open 
with a prompt at the top. The exact form of the prompt varies, but it 
will look something like this:

rsteff@micron-1:~$ _

where the "_" is the cursor. This is where you type the commands the 
other folks have been suggesting. So, for uname -a, it would look 
something like this:

rsteff@micron-1:~$ uname -a
Linux micron-1 2.2.20 #1 Sat Apr 20 11:45:28 EST 2002 i686 GNU/Linux
rsteff@micron-1:~$ _

Hope these help a little. Feel free to ask about any other terms that 
don't make sense to you and one day, you'll be able to share what you've 
learned with newer newbies!

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens
http://home.comcast.net/~rsteff/