I would agree with Roberto.. I usually tell Linux novices to start with RH 6.2.. 7.0 was not a good release. I actually run Slackware 7 with kernal upgraded to 2.4.3 and it supports PostgreSQL 7.1 and Oracle 8.1.6 (at the same time even...)
If you run a non-RH distribution, there may be a couple commands in differnt locations (Slackware has free and something else.. which are in /usr/bin instead of /bin.. but other than that, you can go with whatever works for you