RH 8.0 Network not working

[Jonathan Hutchins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jo mojo [mailto:johan_yo at hotmail.com]

> 1. Cannot connect to internet. 

Run ifconfig from a command prompt and report what it says.

Can you ping the router? Can you ping a numeric IP outside it?  Your card
should be configured to get it's IP, Gateway, and DNS resolver from DHCP,
but RedHat seems to have some trouble pulling the DNS stuff properly.

> 2. RH 8.0 GUI seems to run quite slow. I think PII 450 w/ 128 
> Meg of RAM should be fast enough, right? 

I'm running an AMD 500 with 256M, and it's pretty doggy.  FlightSim won't do
anything but thrash.

Run top and take a look at your swap - Linux loves RAM, and you might
benefit from another $30 stick.

You can also try simplifying the GUI.  Run one of the lighter window
managers rather than KDE with all the bells and whistles, or turn off some
of the extra features.

The other thing you can do is to compile the kernel and XWindows with
options specific to your system.  There's a lot of debugging code in them by
default, and options for everything anybody might ever do in Linux.  Ripping
all that extra stuff out can give you a real performance improvement - or so
I hear.  

By default, RedHat's code will run on a 486, but you can the kernel and some
other files optimized for 586 and 686 (I think the P II is 686, isn't it?).
Start with those if you're not ready for a full compile yet.

Your graphics card can also make a difference in XWindows, especially for
games.  My Voodoo Banshee is not compatible with most of the decent game
drivers, and I have to dink around a lot with games configs if I want them
to run at all.