Linux Novice

[Craig White]

steve wrote:
> 
> I've just gotten a DSL line stuck in my house.  I have 3 PC's, 1 (New dual
> 533 G4)Mac and 1 New G4 Mac Powerbook laptop.  I haven't done anything yet.
> One of the clones has Red Hat 5.2/WIN 98(P I 166), 2nd one has WIN98(P II
> 350), the third clone is a AMD Duron 800 and has no OS on it.  I want to
> use it as a firewall and webserver, so I went to Fry's Electronics and I
> found there are 3 Redhat boxes. A standard for $39.00, and workstation for
> $79.00 and a Professional server for $169.00.
> I also found that Netgear has a 1000 mbps ethernet card there for 149.00
> but they did not have any 1000 mbps switches available.
> Questions:
> 
> 1.) Is the Professional server worth buying?
>     a.)Do I need it for what I want to do.
>     b.)can I buy the cheap one and download all
>        the other stuff packaged with the Pro Server
>        or enough RPM's to get what I need.
> 
> 2.) Without getting too bogged down with the Hardware
>    compat list at Redhats site, has anyone had any great
>    successes with 1000mbps ether cards and swithes or
>    horr stories they want to share.
> 
> I want the Mac to run as a game server for the new game Never Winter Nights
> when it ships with up to 64 people on it at one time.  It already has a gig
> ether card in it. I want it to sit behind a Linux Redhat firewall as well
> has I'm tire of paying to host my website, so the 3rd clone would be
> perfect for a firewall/webserver. I'm too in-experienced to know exactly
> which Redhat package I should get, or where to start, so some direction
> would be nice if you have the time.
> 
----------
I bought the RedHat 7.1 Server Box because I had a project that involved
several different servers and it seemed to be worth it considering the
scale of the job.

You don't need the Server box - everything you need is in the most basic
2 binary CD's and possibly the PowerTools CD which you can download for
free or get in the least expensive box. There are some extra's in the
server package - 1 CD of server applications such as their TUX server, 1
CD of desktop applications such as Star Office, 1 documentation CD, A
games CD and the source CD that you can also easily download.

You do however get their support for 90 days. Their manuals are online.

Fry's has been running specials on the 7.1 Server for $99 every other
week - buy it, keep the receipt, watch for this weeks ads and claim your
refund.

I'll pass on the gigabit network cards since I've not used any but I
hear few problems with those.

When you're ready to make it work, I can help you get started with an
iptables firewall/dnat/snat script.

Craig