[ILUG] Free Linux? Newbe Q

[Niall O Broin]

On 13 Oct 2004, at 13:42, Andoni wrote:

> I was just looking at Esat's FTP Mirror the other day and came across  
> this:
>
> ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/OS/linux/redhat/linux/enterprise/3/en/os/i386/ 
> SRPMS/
>
> Can anyone tell me what it would take to turn this into a working  
> machine? Basically I want to know is this all executable or is it  
> source code, is it free to download and use or should I be paying  
> RedHat?
>
> Then if I do download it is it a complete copy of the operating system  
> RedHat EL 3? What would it take to convert these files into a working  
> server? I am hoping I'll be told to just write them to a CD and boot  
> from it ;-)

Those are the SOURCE RPMs for RHES. However, the very fact that you  
need to ask this question indicates that you're probably not very  
knowledgeable about Linux, and so RHES is probably not what you want.  
If you want to start looking at Linux, there's any number of  
distributions which may be more suitable for your needs e.g. SuSE,  
Mandrake, Fedora. We already had a distro war this week folks - lets  
not have another one.

If you could clarify your needs or wants, Andoni, people might be able  
to give you better advice.


Niall

P.S. Just looked back and you had said Newbe Q so no, you definitely do  
NOT want RHES.