| I've been involved in many aspects of UNIX© (a
computer operating system) since 1984.
For some years it was been an ambition of mine to
install a UNIX© system in my home to keep up-to-date with
developments.
I delayed throughout the years when UNIX© was
thought hard to install, and probably too expensive to obtain and
support on a "hobby" basis. In late 1998, the time had come to obtain
for ourselves a new home computer. As I embarked on the unfamiliar task
of
researching in the various magazines, it became apparent that there was
now considerable interest in (and much experience of) installing Linux
on home computers. I decided that a UNIX-like system was close enough
to what I needed to be worth some research. So I put some effort into
making sure the system we ended up with could be upgraded without too
much difficulty to support both Windows and Linux running on separate
partitions of a single internal disk.
A few months later, I came upon Red Hat Linux 5.2,
courtesy of a free CD supplied with the excellent PC Plus magazine (May 1999). Surely
now was the time to strike.
These pages describe the journey of discovery which
followed ....
The May 2000 edition of PC Plus included a CD
containing Mandrake 7.0, a newer version of Linux resembling Red Hat
but with a graphical installation program in place of the character
based installation. I was keen to work on some
Linux security improvements which merited an up-to-date operating
system. See Linux Mandrake
for details.
In December 2002 I came across the equally excellent Linux Format magazine, and via
their CD distributions upgraded to Mandrake 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2.
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