Why is this here?

Well, the main reason is an easy way to document things I struggled over on my first install, so that I won't have to go through those problems all over again. I find HTML a convenient documentation language, so it is a simple additional step to put it on a web site in hopes that maybe it will also be useful to someone else. 

Several of the things here seem to be recurring themes on the linux Usenet newsgroups. Most of the information here is available elsewhere, but I either found it hard to find, unclear, or scattered about in different places.
 

My Background
 

I started using Linux (Redhat 6.1 circa Mar 2000) after years of HPUX, Solaris and Solaris X86. I was very impressed with the ease of installation and features available with Redhat Linux 6.1. The initial installation went effortessly on my machine and Linux booted up and worked the first time.

Of course, that wasn't good enough for me, so I had to muck with the partitions and stuff after the fact, and it took me all day to recover from that! Also, a couple of things didn't work (sound, printer) so more mucking around was required.