Welcome from a fellow Windows user who has also recently joined this mailing
list. Sending this message off from Microsoft Outlook...

I'm a beginning Linux user as well, but I've installed and briefly played
with many of the distributions available.

First thing: get a current version of a distribution.

As a beginner, you should probably look into Red Hat 6.1, Corel Linux 1.0,
or Caldera OpenLinux 2.3. Corel is probably the easiest. I've decided I'm
going to take a whack at Debian, but I've already tried the other distros
and am feeling a bit adventurous. Plus, I've got the O'reilly "Learning
Debian" book to help me along. That's another thing: if you don't have a
book, get a book!

As the obvious do-gooder that you are, you will find Debian's philosophy
probably matches closest with your own.

About the hard disk: just tap it lightly with a hammer. This will erase the
partition table. :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike McVey [mailto:mdmcvey@att.net]
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2000 3:56 PM
To: kclug@kclug.org
Subject: kclug - hello to all from a Linux curious Windows slave

Dear KCLUG,

I have just joined your mailing list hoping to get in touch with 
linux users in the KC area who enjoy educating newcomers to this OS. 

As a grad. student preparing to teach high school English, I look on 
my pc- technician background and aspirations to gain greater 
technical mastery of the technology and uses of the internet as 
maybe, hopefully, somehow lucrative in light of the low pay I 
anticipate in my main career. In addition, I love the power of the 
internet to subvert the corporate dominance of other realms of public 
discourse, such as newspapers and television, and would like to feel 
a part of this "information revolution" in a bigger way then by 
lining the pockets of Amazon.com.

Anyways, now to my first Linux misadventure:  I have just failed to 
install linux on my 40 MB Pentium 75, and found the Red Hat 5.2 
(apollo) distribution I tried to setup quite baffling--after 
partitioning a 2.5 gig hard disk in a way that FDISK cannot undo 
because it can't see or erase the logical drives Linux created, Red 
Hat crashed amid a series of errors the likes of which this Microsoft 
enslaved end-user has never seen before. At least I have  faith that 
errors mean something decipherable, unlike the General Invalid Page 
Exeption Error Fault mumbo jumbo that I frequently encounter, but 
never try to understand, in Windows.

Anyways, I would love to enlist the handholding of any of you users 
who would be happy to help me get started. I would like to get Linux 
on my IBM 350, 40 MB, 2.5 gig, Pentium 75, and then go on to bigger, 
web serving eligible iron pretty soon. I am considering buying a 
circa 1996,  128 MB,  250 (?) Mhz Alpha workstation with a SCSI bus 
and 4 GB to continue my Linux (mis)endeavors, but I hate to buy the 
thing until I feel confident that 1.) I can make it work, 2.) It is 
as good of a Unix system for the money (a few hundred) as I suspect 
it is.

My ultmate Linux/Unix aspirations are as follows:  to be able to 
implement a least one of the various content-rich, non profit or 
tastefully profitable, web-based online communities (none of which 
are computer related) that I have imagined creating in a manner that 
is affordable and sustainable.

OK, now that I have told you about myself, I look forward to hearing 
about you all. I am curious just what kind of computing Linux folk 
here do.

Good Day!

Mike McVey

Kansas City