Red Hat Linux Fedora For Dummies [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Installation Stage 4: Configuring Your Options

This section describes the basic configuration steps for your Red Hat Linux computer. We describe how to set your time zone and the root user password. You also choose to install extra software in addition to the default packages. The following steps describe how to perform these basic tasks. Note that if you

Your password must be at least six characters long, but you should use at least eight characters: The more characters you use, the harder the password is to break. If you’re concerned about security, we recommend that you use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers to make your password as difficult as possible to compromise. In addition, don’t choose anything you can find in a dictionary or names or items that are easy to associate with you. In other words, your name, your name spelled backward, your birthday, your dog’s name, or any word in any language are all poor choices. Beer, for example, is a poor selection for Jon’s password, even though it has both uppercase and lowercase letters, because Jon and beer are usually seen in close proximity with each other.

A good way to come up with a good password is to select a phrase and destroy it. For example, make “I am not a number” into something like imN0tun#. Even though the result doesn’t spell out the phrase in any real way, it gives you all the cues to remember the essentially random characters ("I am" = im, "not" = N0t, "a" = un, and number = #). Other common substitutions are 3 for e, 4 for a, 9 for g, 1 for I, 8 for b, and 5 for s. In this way, you can create passwords like s0uthb4y (southbay) and 14mn0t4g33k (iamnotageek).

Also, be sure to write down your password where it won’t get lost and can’t be easily found or stolen. For example, save your work passwords at home or store them in a locked desk or safe. Do not write your password on a sticky note and attach it to your computer monitor!

have been following along in this chapter and completed Step 7 in the preceding section, the Additional Language Support window opens and gives you extra linguistic options.

Follow these steps:

With the Additional Language Support window open, make your selection (although almost anyone in the United States doesn’t have to make a selection) and click the Next button.

The Time Zone Selection window appears.

To select your time zone, click the dot representing a city closest to where you live.

Tip You can use the map to point and click your way to your time zone bliss. When you click one of the thousand points of light, the represented city and its time zone appear in the subwindow below the map. You can also click the slider bar at the bottom of the screen to locate the name of your city or time zone. After you find it, click the text to select your time zone.

Click Next.

The Set Root Password window appears.

Type your root password in both the Root Password and Confirm text boxes.

The password is for the root user, also known as the superuser, who has access to the entire system and can do almost anything — good and bad.

Warning The root user is the only user who can access all resources on your computer. All files, processes, and devices are controlled by root. You should log in as the root user only to perform system maintenance or administrative tasks. To avoid making unwanted changes or deletions to these important files, you should normally log in as a regular (non-root) user. See Step 2 in the section “Post Installation: Using the Setup Agent,” later in this chapter, to find out how to add a user.

You have to type the password two times to make sure that you typed it correctly. The password appears onscreen as asterisks as you type it. “Holy breach of security, Batman!” You wouldn’t want someone to be able to look over your shoulder and get your password, would you?

Click Next.

The Workstation Defaults window opens and displays a summary of the important software to be installed. (A summary for whichever installation type you’re using is displayed if you’re not using the Workstation type.) You’re given the choice of selecting either the Accept the Current Package List (the default) option or the Customize the Set of Packages to Be Installed option.

In this book, we use the default packages from the Workstation installation environment.

If you select the Customize the Set of Packages to be Installed option, the Package Group Selection window opens. You can select additional packages to be installed individually or by group. For example, if you want to install the KDE environment, simply click the button next to the KDE Desktop Environment menu and all the necessary packages are then selected. Select individual packages by clicking the Select Individual Packages option. After you make you selection, click the Next button and proceed to Step 6.

Click the Next button.

The About to Install window appears. A loud voice reverberates that this is The Point Of No Return. Well, not exactly. No loud voice says anything, but it is the point of no return. If you click the Next button, your disk is reformatted in whatever way you selected in the preceding section and Red Hat Linux is then installed. The following section describes how that process goes.

Tip GNOME is the default Red Hat graphical environment for Red Hat and is what we use throughout this book. However, many people prefer the KDE environment. The choice is yours; you can use either environment or both, if you want. (If you install both GNOME and KDE on your computer, you can select one or the other as your desktop environment when you log in.) To install KDE, select the Customize the Set of Packages to Be Installed option, as described in Step 5. Click the check box next to the KDE package group and then click the Next button.

If you select the Customize the Set of Packages to Be Installed option and click the Next button in Step 5, the Package Group Selection window appears.

Red Hat organizes individual software packages into package groups. (Packages are described in Appendix D.) For example, individual packages used by the GNOME graphical system are grouped into the GNOME package group. The Red Hat installation process selects certain package groups for each of its installation types. Both the Workstation and Personal Desktop types use the same package groups except that the Workstation type adds the software development package group. The Server installation type uses a different set of package groups.

You generally don’t need to modify the default Red Hat package groups when using the Workstation or Personal Desktop installation types. You can certainly do so if you want, but the default creates a computer that serves most of your needs.