I want to get back into linux - Tech Support Forums

iNeb · April 8th, 2003, 05:08 AM

I have 4 Extra PC's

PC 1 - 800Mhz 256MB ram
PC 2 - 200Mhz 64MB ram
PC 3 - 100Mhz 32MB Ram
PC 4 - 66Mhz 8MB Ram

I have 3 extra ports left on my hub in my room, and i want to get back into linux.. PC1 has Win2k on it, PC2 has mandrake 8.0 on it, PC3 has RH 7.2 on it, PC4 has Win95 on it..

I have on disk:
Slackware 8.0 (Never used)
Mandrake 8.0
RH 7.2
FreeBSD 4.5 (Never Used)
Devil Linux (Never used)

But they are outdated...

Now the question is, what Linux should i go with? RedHat and Mandrake are fine, but i want a little more advanced so i can learn some more, should i go with RH, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian?

I don't plan on doing anything but playing with it and learning how to use linux, so which should i choose?

April 8th, 2003, 06:30 AM

How about another fish into the fray - College Linux!

Its a newish slackware-based distro designed for newbies (mainly college students). Nice apps with it.

Worth checking out, IMO.

Cheers
Mick

SpookyEddy · April 8th, 2003, 06:40 AM

I like debian, Slack and gentoo best of the mainstream distro's. However if you are new to linux you may be more comfortable with an rpm based distro like Mandrake, RedHat or SuSE.

FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are not flavours of linux but could still be worth a look if you just want a machine that provides a unix like system. IMO they are of a similar difficulty to Slack or debian, so being comfortable with operating from a shell would probably help.

Regards

eddy

iNeb · April 8th, 2003, 06:56 AM

What would i have to do if it was not an rpm based PC?

Also, i bought a few books on linux awhile ago, so that will help me learn the ropes..

nukes · April 8th, 2003, 07:45 PM

Most distros use Redhat's packaging system. Other distros have their own methods of managing installed software, from Debian's apt-get which downloads binary versions of software of the internet, Gentoo's emerge dounloads source and compiles with the CFLAGS you set in a config file. Slackware is more minimal, but still functional.
If you want to learn about Linux again I suggest using a distro like Slack or Debian, but if you are a newbie and want it to be nice and easy, then you should probally go for one of the other distros like Mandrake, SUSE, or Redhat. My preference there being on Mandrake.

samwichse · April 8th, 2003, 09:01 PM

Wow, Windows95 on 8mb of ram? You must be masochistic.

You might try tinylinux on that thing, but you're only getting a CLI on it unless you want windows 3.1.

The P100 with 32mb of ram I'd reccomend using as a router/firewall. Also CLI only, it'd work about perfectly for that

.

The other two you have your choice of distros, although that collegelinux did look pretty nice. I'm really enjoying RedHat 9 right now, which comes similarly equipped but is more server/power user oriented.

Sam

iNeb · April 8th, 2003, 09:55 PM

I plan on making my 800Mhz machine my primary linux machine, since it is one of the most powerful out of my little team..

I want to learn how to use linux, but i don't want to have to work so hard at first, i'm not a programmer so i can't compile the software to install it. I like how RH and Mandrake run, but i want something a little more advanced

pbharris · April 9th, 2003, 12:44 AM

hello,
if you don't want to compile and like a bit more advanced i would really go for debain - it has thousands of easy to install packages out there

iNeb · April 9th, 2003, 12:53 AM

Any screenshots out there? debian.org doesn't have any..

Praetorian · April 9th, 2003, 04:16 AM

http://maverick.hostbet.net/fluxbox-screenshot.png

Nothing special. That's Debian Sid running Fluxbox and a few other apps. Those are two monitors running in Xinerama mode BTW.

You don't have to be a programmer to compile the programs from source. I don't know any programming languages, yet I compile program from source.