[WBEL-users] A whole bevy of questions...

[kirby]

I have been tweaking around with White-Box to do a little Oracle Database
training/testing for myself at home.  It has worked fine.

Now that I am past that I am starting to play around quite a bit more with
Linux as a home box.. And I have questions coming out of my ears... If these
are in the FAQ I apologize, but I didn't see them...

1) If I am installing other applications that are supposed to successfully
run on Red Hat ... Which ones should I be using?  FC1, FC2, FC3, RHEL9?  I
am just a bit confused on the version numbering and why there are 4 versions
of a program.  Are they that finicky on libraries and compatibility?

2) The application I am in particular trying to bring up is mythtv.  Sort of
a free TiVo.
Has anyone done this successfully?  Many of dependencies have installed
fine, but a couple, like ivtv, have not.
2a) I have hit some snags with kernel modules not being found.  Bttv and a
couple of others.  Can someone explain how to add a module to the kernel?
/sbin/modprobe says they aren't there.  Probably intentional, but I now want
to add them back in.

3) I am installing a raft of applications to bring this up... My prior Unix
experience has been Solaris, AIX, HP-UX on bigger boxes running one
application ... Oracle.  So I am encountering issues I haven't had to deal
with before.
How do people organize 30-50+ packages that they are installing?  I started
with one 'Install' directory, but that is getting unmanageable.

4) ... With all these questions does anyone have a good book or site to
recommend that answers this level of questions?  A book is preferred...