First Post!

From Linux!! I have spent the better part of the last 24 hours fighting network configuration issues in Red Hat 8.0

I started with a brand new computer, Celeron 1.7 GHZ, 256MB RAM. I installed Windows XP first in a 20 GB partition. It went flawlessly. Then I started on Red Hat.

It seemed to go well. But when I booted into Linux I could not get a network connection. So I went back to Windows and hit Google for help. I spent all last night fighting with Linux to get an Internet connection through my Wireless LAN setup. Linux won and I went to bed.

I woke up with the brilliant idea to just move the wireless router upstairs to my office and plug the PC directly into it. Somewhere in this process I hosed my Linux install. So I reinstalled Red Hat, this time with normal Ethernet. Again, no connection. Hours of surfing around in Windows led me to the conclusion that the on board Ethernet adapter on this PC (SIS 900/7016CI) is not Linux friendly. So, off we go to plan C.

Plan C was to take the Linksys Ethernet Card out of an old PC and put it in my new PC. Again, Red Hat was not impressed. Some nosing around the web, and reading through the log files led me to believe that DHCP was the problem. So, I booted back into XP, reconfigured my router, reconfigured the Wlan in XP, confirmed it was working, and booted back to Linux.

Again - nothing.

About this time I broke for dinner. Michelle asked why I was putting myself through this when XP worked properly. The open source thing appeals to my "be different, screw the establishment" side. Being married with 2 kids and a mortgage, I have very few outlets for my anarchistic leanings. Operating systems fills that void.

God that sounds lame.

Anyway, at this point I decided I would reinstall Red Hat one more time, and if it failed again I would use XP until I could get a Linux geek friend to come over and help.

The 3rd time was the charm. I have no idea why, I entered all the same configuration data as I had before. I'm guessing I missed something when I manually changed from DHCP to static IP's.

So, now starts a new series on ODonnellWeb, Living with Linux. For the next 30 or so days, I will try to live my day to day computing life in Red Hat, only going to XP for games, or if I absolutely can't get something to work in Linux. Stay tuned...