This series of articles are a follow on to the Checklist for Newbies. They assume that you have installed one of the Linux distributions on your computer and are now raring to go. But wait, with all the hype that currently surrounds Linux, you've lost sight of the single most important question, what can I do now?

This paper is about the "how" of Linux, concentrating on the challenges involved with migrating large and heterogeneous network environments. Replacing Windows NT is not always quick and easy (although it can be), but the return on a sound Linux investment is always worth the effort.

After two months of heavy use, our reviewer finds little to complain about with FreeBSD. In our first part, we looked at FreeBSD's history and installation.

Organizations throughout the world are adopting Linux as their production platform. By connecting to the Internet to provide critical services, they also become targets of opportunity. To help protect these Linux systems, this article covers the basics of securing a Linux box. The examples provided here are based on Red Hat 6.0, but should apply to most Linux distributions.

LinuxFromScratch is a project which aims to teach the inner workings of Linux, by describing how to compile a fully functional Linux distribution (with the same capabilities as existing Linux distributions such as Debian, SuSe, Slackware, RedHat and others) entirely from source.

I often find myself hearing that many organizations are trying to find a way to implement Linux into their existing networks. Samba provides a way to incorporate Linux to service their Windows workstations. Also, with the number of available IPV4 IP addresses dwindling, Linux can act as an excellent masquerading machine using one available address for numerous clients connecting to the Internet.

"Supercluster" compliations of Linux allow researchers in many fields computational power that otherwise would be difficult to afford. Genomic research, weather prediction, medicine, physics, and chemistry stand to benefit from the new availability of supercomputing power.

The most efficient and stable operating system ever created would be nothing without applications. Maintaining a large variety of applications in a corporate environment can be challenging to say the least, however, Linux has some wonderful features that can help to greatly simplify this job.

The situation: "I'm trying to recompile the kernel on a Red Hat 6.0 Dell PowerEdge 2300 server. It is going to be used for DNS and I want to slim down the kernel and remove unnecessary modules and options." What should I do?

One thing distinguishes Linux from other operating systems: its diverse and vibrant community. One such manifestation of the Linux community is the Linux User Group, or LUG. A LUG is a group of users in the same geographical region which gets together to discuss everyone's favourite OS, and to educate others about the virtues and challenges posed by Linux.