>Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 20:22:28 -0800 >From: " Bruce Burhans" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Ben, thanks. I've seriously looked into the dual-boot approach and >concluded that I'm very likely to end up with two non-working OSs. If I >had more experience or a pro like you for a neighbor, sure. But I'm >basically on my own and a true newbie. [snip]
It all sounds like me, even to isolation & the reading list. I don't mean to argue with Ben, exactly, as mileage does vary. However: I learned vi & some basic Unix via a shell account. (Oh, you want to know how much? See _Learning the UNIX Operating System_; O'Reilly -- hardly that much.) Next I designed a new box & hired a Linux man to put it together for me; he installed both Win95 & Red Hat 5.2. My work as a free-lance editor (geology, mostly) tied me tightly to Win, & I lacked the time & nerve to even explore Linux. But one day Win, always crash-prone, crashed catastrophically -- & in a blasphemous rage I wiped everything Microsoft off my drives, informed my assignment editor that this machine was under New Management, & learned what I had to learn when I had to learn it. I've never regretted it. Never. Thus you may convert sooner than you now think. Wendell Cochran West Seattle PS Karsten M. Self would have me say that the practice in this list is postfix: comment _below_ the mesg quoted. It reads easier that way.