Mom, your computer is now running RedHat.

I took your computer home and the first thing I tried was installing SLAX. This is a "Live CD" based on the Slackware distribution. It loads off a CDROM drive and doesn't even require a hard drive. If you have one, it will mount it up and let you access files on it. It came with instructions on installing it permanently, but I couldn't get it to work. I think I could have got it done by working harder, but I decided to install a simple (kind of) version of RedHat Linux instead.

The toughest part was configuring the modem. Thank God that the instructions came on the CD because I would have never figured it out. All my previous Linux experience has been Ethernet based, which is pretty easy. The instructions on the Modem CD said: (I include them here not for you to read but so I can find them later.)

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1.10 Linux Red Hat 6.0

A. Manual mode:

1. At path /proc, find file pci then use vi editor to find Topic vender ID “151f” and the I/O-address, IRQ-number Linux assign to Topic modem.
   
   For example :
   
   cd /proc
   vi pci
   
   … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
   Vendor id=151f. Device id=0.
   Medium devsel. IRQ=5.
   I/O at 0xe400 [0xe401].
   … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
   
   (type :q to quit vi)
   
   
2. At path /dev, use setserial tty-number uart 16550A irq IRQ-number port I/O-address
   For example : setserial ttyS2 uart 16550A irq 5 port 0xe400
   
   
3. At path /dev, remove default modem link then link modem to the tty you assign in step 2
   For example :
   
   rm modem
   ln –s ttyS2 modem
   
   
4. Now, you can use minicom to test the modem by type ATI3 to make sure the modem is Topic modem.
   
   For example : minicom
   
   … … … … … … . .
   ATI3
   
   

B. Automatic Mode

1. Copy topic.modem excutable file to /bin
2. Copy script file rc.serial to /etc/rc.d
3. When Linux boot again you can see the message " Setup topic modem … " or you can run topic.modem directly.
4. You can use minicom to check Topic modem.

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So I finally got it up and running after realizing that on the setserial command I was using a lowercase "s." My bad. Then I dialed out using KPPP and connected to PeoplePC, and it worked great. The only problem I had was that I was logged in at that time as root. I wanted to try using the dial-up connection with your "ellen" profile. So I logged out of my session, but I forgot to end the KPPP Internet connection. If I tried that in Windows, it would have ended the connection, but Linux is a real operating system and since you didn't specifically tell it to end it's Internet Connection, it kept it up. So I logged in as "ellen: and tried to launch KPPP and it failed, because it was already up. It wanted the root password, which I gave it. Then it said the modem was busy. I dropped to a command line interface and killed the KPPP application and then I was able to login using KPPP from your login.

At this point, I think we have only two minor problems:

1. HotMail does not like the Konquerer web browser so you have to use Mozilla. I think if I put Firefox on it, that should work. Personally, I think that you should migrate to a more browser friendly E-Mail provider, like Google's Gmail. Also, Gmail would let you check and send e-mail using an offline E-Mail program like Mozilla Thunderbird, so you could look your e-mail while you were offline, write e-mail offline, and then they would be sent when you connected.
   
   
2. We gotta make sure that your digital camera works in Linux. I think it will work fine.
   

Welcome to Linux, mom! You'll love it here!