Evan asks:
>Is it possible for RedHat 6.x to not require a login name and password for a workstation install?


Yes and no. You can always start up a linux box in "single user mode" - which gives you a console
login with no windowing system and you are "super user" or "root". This is for system maintenance.
Typically, file systems aren't mounted except for /. You mount them by hand. However, things don't
look much like a "workstation" then!

Linux is a "multi-user", "multi-tasking" operating system. This means that in run levels 3 or 5
you MUST log in to get a shell. Now, there are services you can get from it without logging in:
(e.g. web service, file service, database service (sql calls...)) but the answer is: NO, you must log in.
Now, you can set up accounts that do not require a password, (e.g. anonymous ftp account), but this is
not usually good form.

Run level 3 is multi-user mode, but with X-Windows (XFree86) running on your box. Run level 5 is mult-user mode
with X-Windows running. That means that on the console (your PC's monitor!) you will have a window manager
fire up (gnome or kde or whatever) and give you a gui interface. If you are on another box on the network,
you can remotely display there if X-Windows is running. Otherwise, remote access is via a terminal window
and keyboard mode.

By the way, the question of which window manager to run is quite a religious argument! You've got RH 6.1
installed, which has a quite young version of Gnome. The current version of Red Hat is 6.2 and there is
a newer version of gnome with it. There is also some super version of gnome scheduled for release soon
according to my sources.

You may want to try the command "switchdesk". It allows you to switch your desktop window manager.

You can make your linux box look like just about anything these days: PC or Mac! by your choice of window manager

What Jerry Kreps says about gnome is true: your version of gnome is a bit young and so it may crash a bit
every now and then.


If it does, you can still get to a console window by hitting: Ctrl-Alt-Fn where n is 2-6 (F2,F3,,,.F6)
You will get a login: prompt. You can login as root, list tasks running: ps aux | more (pipe to more so
the complete list doesn't scroll by - i.o redirection in linux is cool), look at the process ID number for a
task that's hung (e.g. the gnome stuff or some gnome window), and kill -9 the_pid to get rid of it. You should almost never have to reboot a linux box
(Note: if you do not have another box on the network to telnet into your box, there may be a few instances when
gnome will freeze up the console so that Ctr-Alt-F2 or even Ctrl-Alt-Del won't work - it will be really hosed.
That is quite unusual, but in that case you will have to power cycle the box.

Linux is quite nice about Ctrl-Alt-Del It will reboot, but it won't treat it like windows and violently drop your system
down. It will still give it a nice clean shutdown.

Oh, by the way. The reason to know how to use a NON-GUI editor on a linux system is that there will be times,
guaranteed, that you will not be able to use a gui and you will have to fix something. Having gui's is fine, but
I don't trust them for one minute! Being able to go in and fix things by hand is what you CAN'T do in a
Doze environment. While in normal operations you may want to use a gui, just be thank ful that you don't
have to use one because you can fix things you could never fix (you can telnet in and fix them from any where
in the world instead of having to be there at the console so you can run the gui).

Xemacs is pretty cool if you want a good powerful gui editor. That's what my son uses (Duke CPS major).