Fedora 7/Ubuntu help

[Matt Graham]

On Friday 17 August 2007 12:18, after a long battle with technology, 
Stephen P Rufle wrote:
> I would like to ask the list if there is anyone that lives near
> Ray/Cooper who would be willing to help me learn about GNU/Linux ( I
> am starting with the two distros in the subject). I would be willing
> to buy dinner ( pizza ... etc or you can eat a home cooked meal :)
> and then tutor me on the different issues I might be having.

I don't live that near (13.1 miles away, Southern and Mill, "25 minutes 
in traffic" according to Google Maps, that is probably underestimating 
things.) but might be willing to help.

>     * Software RAID ( wanted to know someone before I invoke a
> failure), GUI tool to show state or manage

SoftRAID is too important to be left to a GUI tool.  However, it should 
be pretty easy to hack something that reads /proc/mdstat and displays 
that info prettily with Gtk2-Perl.  Doing things with mdadm would also 
be possible with that approach, but it'd require more work.

>     * Would like to set up VNC so I can run the comp with no monitor
>       after it is setup

No problem, run KDE Desktop Sharing or gino or x11vnc while you have a 
monitor hooked up, test, make sure it works, fuggeddabouttit.  NOTE:  
VNC is not insanely great wrt speed, and will be laggy and annoying 
even on a switched 100bT net.  BTDT.  There's *got* to be a much better 
way.  I don't know what it is though.  For running individual apps, 
using X (bare if you have your X started without -nolisten tcp or 
forwarded over ssh if not) is the way to go if you have 100bT.

>     * General guidance on living with Linux

0. Try something new.
1. If it worked, great.  Remember it.  Goto 0.
2. If it didn't work, remember how it failed, try to do things 
differently next time so that it fails in a different way or works.  
Search The Fine Web for keywords that relate to what you want to do, 
and you can often find much useful information.  Goto 0.

-- 
   The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in
   late and owns the worm farm.  --Travis McGee
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see