Home computer stuff

Our DSL is working at home again. I never could have guessed how much hassle it would have been to try to switch to a cheaper provider. And now we are back with Qwest again. Oh the irony. At least we have a faster connection now -- 1.5Mbps in theory, but more like 1.1Mbps in my tests.

So now I'm starting to build a Linux server to host my website and maybe my mail domain too (although what's the point, now that I use gmail exclusively?). I'm using Fedora Core 2 because that is what the book I'm using, Setting Up Lamp, assumes. Very good book so far.

My previous experience with Linux was: (1) installing Debian 3.0 a few times, finally getting the GUI to show up but never getting networking to work (somebody told me I need to edit the interfaces file, and I lost all interest); (2) installing Mandrake 10.0 a few times, which was friendlier than Debian, but I was fairly baffled about how to launch the Firefox browser after installing (at least I think I installed it). Ha ha, this 12-year software engineer can't even install and run a program in Linux. Actually I think that reflects worse on Linux than on Brad.

The Fedora install was very smooth. I can even ping my new Linux box on its fixed IP address from my Windows network ... woo hoo! Running vi and lynx took me back to 1992, college days when all I had in my excuse-for-an-apartment was an 8088 machine which on bootup dialed into the the OSU UNIX servers at 14K bps.