Throw it in the garbage. There is absolutely NO point in trying to learn a Linux distribution that is almost ten years old! Updates are no longer available, libraries will be so old that you can't hardly install or compile anything modern, and the kernel itself won't likely support modern hardware.
If you're interested in Linux I would suggest one of the following:
http://centos.org/
CentOS is basically the community released version of RedHat Enterprise. It is *NOT* a desktop distribution. If you're looking to learn Linux and be familiar with enterprise distributions out in the real world this is a really good choice. I use CentOS for almost all my servers.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
This is based on the Debian distribution with a lot of improvements primarily targetted at making Linux on the Desktop easier. You can use it for server stuff as well. Now, just because you can install Ubuntu and run Firefox in the GUI doesn't make you a Linux expert as some folks seem to think
In the server/IT world it is unlikely you'll ever see any type of GUI or Xorg installation.
Both of the above can be downloaded and installed for free and are current versions with updates and modern hardware support.
Agreed on all counts. But I would suggest you clarify what you mean by "learning Linux."
If you just want to learn how to
use a stable, fast, powerful, free desktop alternative to Windows, then go with Ubuntu. There's very little "learning" needed. My nieces, nephews, and godchildren (ranging in age from 4 to 10) all use it quite handily, having received little instruction other than how to log on to their user accounts. The rest was intuitive. Also, they can't easily break anything as ordinary users on Ubuntu.
Recently, however, the oldest two surprised me. They figured out that opening a terminal and typing "pon verizon" fires up the EVDO and gets them on the Internet, and they promptly created shortcuts on their desktops. I'd been keeping the connection method a secret to avoid them running up the EVDO bandwidth by downloading videos and such. I would have been annoyed if I weren't also just a little bit impressed that they'd figgered it out.
But yes, Ubuntu's very user-friendliness makes it a poor learning platform for learning Linux administration. You can do almost anything through the GUI in Ubuntu.
There also are some differences between Ubuntu and other Linux distros even when using the terminal. One example is that the root account is disabled by default in Ubuntu (it can be enabled optionally, however, if you like). I once sold a laptop with Ubuntu on eBay to a guy who had a gazillion years as a Unix admin. He called me in frustration after several hours of trying to do something in the terminal that required root privileges because he didn't know that "sudo su" or "sudo -i" was needed to unlock that door for him. (I think all he wanted to do was change the time zone or some other mundane thing.)
So again, it really depends on what it is you want to learn to do. If you want to learn Linux itself, rather than simply how to use another desktop system, use CentOS. It's all I've used for Web / File servers for the past six or seven years; and it's almost identical to RHEL, which is abut as close to a "standard" Linux as there is.
(By the way -- I'm posting this from a laptop running Ubuntu, via Verizon EVDO, from Philadelphia PA. And yes, I'm using FF from the GUI
)
-Rich
