Installation: Choosing a host & domain name ... (slightly confused)
Greeting all,
This year I moved from MS Windows to Ubuntu Linux, to Arch Linux, and finally to OpenBSD, which I'm rather enjoying.
During the installation I was asked to provide a host-name, and domain-name. Can anyone come up with a terse explanation of the their significance?
e.g. Suppose I made my hostname "bilbo" and my domainname "shire.middleearth" (is that period even necessary?) I know that "bilbo@shire.middleearth" is me, I'm "bilbo", in the TLD "middleearth", in the subdomain "shire" ... but what does THAT mean? How can I just go making up domain names? I thought I had to register to get those. If someone wanted to send mail to that address how would the DNS servers know where to look?
(Please try to avoid being cryptic) Thanks in advance!
Jack
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