I have installed a RedHat Linux distribution from the CD-ROM of a computer magazine that also featured at least 100MB of other Windows software apart from Linux. Now, even though I followed instructions carefully, there's something that doesn't work!!!! (This is valid for some computer magazines in Romania) What can I do?

First step: throw away the incomplete CD. Nowadays a serious Linux distribution like Red Hat 6.0-6.2 fills up 99 per cent of a 640MB CD-ROM, which means that the people that downsized the original distribution played God and removed packages more or less arbitrarily and, even worse, changed the installation procedure to give a 'personal touch' to the distribution.

Get a real distribution, perhaps you can copy a CD from someone that downloaded the distribution from a reputable Internet source or even copy from original CDs (yes, it is allowed as long as you do it for personal use).

I have personally had numerous headaches from trying to help people install or fix Linux on their PCs only to discover that they used weird CDs (some of them didn't tell me straight from the beginning!) Always prefer the original, or a good copy of it. It's worth the extra effort or money. The same goes for backup (it only shows how much you value your time or data).

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