Installing Debian Linux the hard way...HELP!
I saw your reply to Bert Conliffe an was hoping you could give me similar
assistance.
Personal background:
I've learned computers by sitting in front of them and struggling my way
through them. Currently I use WindowsNT at work with Lotus notes 4.5 for
E-Mail and Netscape for surfing. I can find my way around Windows fairly
well but I don't like it much. I am returning to study to catch-up with the
technology I have missed while I was in the American Navy. I will be
attending an Electronics Engineering Degree from Open University and C
Programming from Washington University Distance Learning. I felt it would
be a good Idea to use Linux to work from rather than Windows as it seems to
be more powerful and UNIX seems to be the system of choice for most network
servers. I have set up a computer at work with the following installed
(Don't laugh, Its my first attempt to EVER set-up a PC from scratch):
Pentium processor
16M Ram
600M Hard Drive that I installed Base Linux on. ( Just from the Boot
Floppies I copied from Debian)
400M Hard Drive that has DOS and other stuff on it that I added to the
system for more storage and for porting my programming attempts to
DOS/Windows. ( I hope to have DOS boot from this drive and to run DJGPP, A
DOS port of g++ from UNIX. I forget exactly who wrote it, but it seems to
be popular for DOS programming)
NO network card. Work won't let me connect a Linux box to there network,
only WindowsNT. ( Go figure????)
One 9 pin serial port
and a null-modem cable to a WindowsNT PC for installing the rest of the
packages ( I hope, I hope)
My problem:
I can't connect to the Net to download the packages for the rest of Debian.
I know NOTHING about Linux/UNIX
I want to copy ALL of the Package sub-directories from Debian to the
Windows machine and use the null-modem cable to install what I want/need to
the Linux box.
man doesn't seem to work on my machine. ( I get bash: man: command not
found)
could you give me basic, step by step instructions to establish a
connection from the Linux box to the Windows PC so I could hopefully use
dselect to install the packages I need/want from a sub-directory on the
Windows PC? Also, is there a quick was to copy the packages directories
from the debian site to my Windows machine rather that clicking them one by
one for download with Netscape? Do you know of any good beginning
Linux/UNIX book I could get from the Web so I can start to learn my way
around this machine? and last ( for now) how can I set-up my second Hard
Drive to boot into DOS from Linux?
I know this is long winded but, I am hoping you could get me started as I
want to get involved in the Debian Linux project, I just need some help
with the learning curve. Thanks in advance for any assistance. I've posted
to the users list but it seems they tend to forget that not everyone knows
how to use commands like getty or stuff.
Cheers,
John Gay
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