[wplug] Pure newbie questions

[Anna McCullough]

Hello all...

I found this newsgroup by following a link from Linux.org, and I'm hoping for a
little direction.

I'm completly new to the world of the penguin, folks, and I'm asking your
patience in advance. I know I'm going to be asking what will appear to be
completely stupid questions! I want to install Linux on my new computer in the
very near future; I'm not at all knowledgeable about this OS and I'm looking for
a place where I can ask questions when needed.

I'm currently running a home-built 900 mhz system (Intel Socket 370) with 512
megs of RAM and this machine is currently dual-booting Win98 and WinXP. I have a
total of 80 gigs of drive space (two 40 gig HD's), with ten of those completely
unformatted and set aside, so to speak, for my upcoming dip in the Linux pool :)

It has NVidia TNT2 video and C-Media soundcard on board the mobo, as well as a
PCTEL riser-card modem and a TDK cd/rw drive, plus an external USB 100 meg Zip
disk. I also have a SCSI UMAX Astra 1200S scanner - great machine! I
*think* I'm okay with the video and sound in a Linux install, particularly
RedHat - but I'm not at all sure about the rest.

Has anyone had any success with a modem like this, especially, and is there a
way to tell a modem that doesn't have support from the manufacturer for Linux
that it should be able to work anyhow?? Granted, replacing the modem for a more
Linux-friendly model is a no-brainer but hey, I'm up for learning stuff :)

And for a totally raw newbie question - how does Linux refer to drives? When I
tell this program to jump into the unformatted ten-gigs (my machine currently
has physical drives of C, D, and E from a DOS standpoint, with the blank part
the potential drive F) - what's the designation I should be looking at?

Thanks much for any help, and apologies if these questions are
kindergarten-level. I haven't even taken my first steps in Linux yet besides
buying a book, so there's so much to learn :)

Cheers,
Anna McCullough