After suffering a loss in the family and various other upsetting or annoying things, I finally managed to sit down and do some more work with Linux today...

First off, I decided to install the RPMs for the 2.2.5 kernel and the accompanying required libraries... Once again my ambition overflowed and got ahead of my knowledge, and the system was totally screwed... I could have probably sorted it out, but decided it was easier to just reinstall Linux. So for the fourth time, I installed from the trusty Red Hat 5.2 CD (If anyone has a Red Hat 6 CD they would like to throw in my direction I wouldn`t complain :) ).

After the reinstall I decided to try using Glint... A program I have yet to figure out. I figured I could easily point it at RPM's and it would be easy, but the program steadfastly refused to do what I wanted, so unless someone can help me out, the program is going in the garbage...

Once I had finished being annoyed with Glint I went back to Windoze (I don`t earn enough money to buy a new modem... bills, rent etc...), and downloaded an MP3 player... Upon trying to install it, I discovered that the libraries I needed, were missing... Nice of the person to mention that on their webpage *sigh*.

On the plus side I have FINALLY got my CD Writer to mount. The main reason I need this is because my plain old CD-ROM drive is a piece of **** that doesn`t read copied CDs properly. Not just in Linux - in anything. It has a problem reading them and gets stuck, so the CDR is very useful to have in Linux.

Then I decided to try and figure out why some programs won`t open and I discovered the problem. My resolution. I`m running 800x600x16, and of course some of the programs will only work with an 8-bit resolution, so I reconfigured and it worked... Now the problem. How can I flip easily between 800x600x8 and 800x600x16? I need the 16-bit resolution - as I do a lot of graphic work with JPEG's - but I also want the versatility of the 8-bit resolution. If anyone has any suggestions I would be greatful. The Ctrl-Alt-+ doesn`t work, as both screen modes are 800x600 which is a BIG pain... Any suggestions will be received with a great deal of thanks and eternal gratitude.

So all in all, not good. I got hold of a copy of StarOffice today and decided to try and install it... The install collapsed with a scripting error before it did anything.

So a lot of bad things, but a couple of good. If nothing else I`ve really delved into Linux today and discovered a lot of things. At least I can tell my boss I've actually figured stuff out this weekend... Oh yeah, and this was the first entry written in Linux!