[ale] Newbee needing help #1

[William Bagwell]

On Tuesday 18 July 2006 01:22 pm, Bruce Jones wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Newbee, old DOS geek, CAD professional of 26 years, current Windows XP
> Pro user. Just wiped Win 2000 Pro off my Xeon dual processor machine and
> loaded the (purchased) install set for SUSE Linux 10. first load (with
> Gnome as the GUI) found my mouse, keyboard, printer, I was impressed :-),
> but, it wouldn't let me into the root :-(

Welcome! Glad to see we now have a CAD guru on the list. <wink>

> Reloaded it, gace a different root username and password from the first
> user UN and PW and things changed (lost the printer) and still couldn't
> get to the root. Crossed my mind that 010101 might not be an acceptable
> root password.

I'm a bit confused here, root does not have a username, root is "root", it 
does have a password. *You* have a user name. (And anyone else using the 
computer, or you can all share a single user name, or each of you have 
multiple user names.) Each username can have its own password (Or for home 
use none at all) which will differ from the root password. 

Run as a user most of the time and only become root when you need to. Most 
of the GUI tools will prompt you for the root password when needed. From 
either the termanal (Roughly the same as a DOS shell) or from a true comand 
prompt you can still run many comands, tools, programs, things... as a mere 
user. Then when you need root privileges you can simply "su to root". Type 
su press Enter then type your root password and press Enter again. The 
reverse will work with the addition of user name. su me <Enter> then 
password if any.

> Reloaded it a third time (new un and pwds all around) now I have access,
> keyboard, & mouse, semi-pleased :-|
>
> I would appreciate any tidbits that you "superusers" are willing to
> share. I am a college instructor and it is my desire to set up a home
> network and eventually Moodle server for my students.

Never used Moodle but have used several versions of BlackBoard from dev to 
(I think) 6. Sometimes more than one version the same quarter... Possiblly 
will have time to help you test it if you need me.

> I have several remaining issues which I will post separately to avoid
> confusion, #1

I'm staying out of that:)

> snip printer 
>
> I "did" Fortran77 in the late '70's, several flavors of Basic and
> Autolisp in the 90's, but once I open the superuser "blank page with
> cursor in the upper left" I am lost in Linux, HELP? What beginners book
> do you suggest?

Did you boot to it? (Command prompt) Or click on an icon that looks like a 
black TV screen? (Termanal AKA Konsole in KDE) My advice is don't try to 
learn it all at once.
-- 
William