First Linux Boot

Ok, now your installation is complete and Redhat Linux is booting up for the first time. If you did a dual boot installation, then first you will see the bootloader screen (probably GRUB unless you chose LILO during installation) come up. It should look something like this:

It will offer you your choices of operating system for booting the computer. Whichever one you chose to be the default operating system during installation should be highlighted. You will be given a few seconds to override the default selection if you desire before the computer continues booting up. Make sure Redhat Linux is selected.

Watch the screen during this first boot because you aren't quite done setting things up yet. During the boot, your hardware will be auto detected. A message box will probably pop up asking you to configure some piece of hardware such as your sound card or ethernet card. If you wonder away or ignore the message, eventually the system will timeout and continue booting but the hardware in question will not be configured and you will have to wait until the next time you boot up the computer to do so.

On this first boot the Redhat Setup Agent will run. It will guide you through the remaining configuration steps.

First you will have the option to set the system date and time.

Next you will have the option of registering with the Redhat Network and receiving system updates via the Update Agent. This is an optional but highly recommended step. By using the Update Agent, you can keep your Redhat Linux installation current. You'll receive all the bug fixes and security patches that have been issued since the release of 8.0. It only takes a few minutes to register with the Redhat Network. All you really need to give them is a name and an email address. Everything else is optional. Once you are registered, you can update your system.

Detailed instructions on how to use the Update Agent can be found at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/RHNetwork/ref-guide/up2date.html. Updating a newly installed system can take quite a while (especially if you only have a dialup connection) due to the large number of packages that will need to be updated initially. You can skip doing the update now if you are pressed for time. But you should do it as soon as possible. Perhaps schedule it for some time when the computer won't be busy for a while and you won't need the phone for a while (if you are using a dialup connection).

You will be notified by email and by an icon on your desktop (if you are connected to the Internet) when new updates are released. After the initial update, subsequent updates are quite fast since they usually only involve one or two packages at a time. So keeping your system current is easy and quite painless.

The last step in setting up your computer is the option to install additional software, if you have any. If not, just click on the Forward button and you are finished.

The computer will now prompt you for a user name and password to log in.

You can either log in as user name root and use the root password you created during installation, or you can log in using the user account and password you created.

Once you are logged in, the computer will start up the graphical desktop environment which will look something like this:

And that's it. Welcome to the world of Linux. Go to the Using Linux section to learn your way around.