Questions

[Rasjid Wilcox]

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 6:30 pm, Jeremy Heromy wrote:
> Hey, I'm in the Canberra area and I've had a recent interest in linux and
> would love to try it out. I have been recommended Mandrake linux and have
> read a lot about it (feel free to recommend anything for a newbie if you
> feel its appropriate). My questions are as follows:
>
> 1) I could download mandrake from their site, although I do not have a
> burner, so I can't put it on a CD. Is there a place in Canberra I can get
> it? A burnt copy of the downloadable one prefered (as its cheap, and I'd
> like to try this out before I put too much money into it - I'm poor), but I
> may still consider the real version, depends on the pricing. Harvey Norman
> only seemed to have Red Hat linux.

I can burn you a copy Redhat 7.3 (for some replacement discs), but I don't 
have Mandrake, although I know someone I can get it from if no-one else 
offers.  :-)

>
> 2) I know I should probably ask transact this, but I'm writing this anyway,
> so I may as well ask you. I recently got transact and to connect to the
> internet it uses Enternet 300, I looked for a linux version of it and found
> that there was a command line version, but could not find a place to
> download it. If any of you have this, know any info on it, or can tell me a
> method of connecting to transact internet with linux, It would be great if
> you could share your info with me.
>

You just need pppoe, which I'm pretty sure comes with most distros now days, 
so I don't think you need to worry too much.  Mandrake may well have some 
nice GUI configuration tool for it too.

I'm on TransACT, and have not had any trouble getting Linux to work with it.  
Personally I have always made sure I had a firewall between me and the world.
If you have a spare 486 lying around, put Smoothwall 
(http://www.smoothwall.org), IP Cop 
(http://www.ipcop.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/IPCop/WebHome) or Gibraltar 
(http://www.gibraltar.at) etc etc on it.  I currently use Gibraltar, but have 
previously used Smoothwall.  Smoothwall is certainly better for newbies.  IP 
Cop is a fork of Smoothwall and I believe is essentially the same.  IP Cop 
will remain GPL'd unlike Smootwall which is making itself closed source.

I live in Rivett and work in Downer, so if you are reasonalby close to either 
of those, I can give you a hand setting things up, as long as you are not in 
a desperate hurry (ie, not tomorrow, maybe this weekend depending...)

Rasjid.