Which Distro?

[Atealtha]

the gentoo system is called portage. I remember a thread here explaining how you can install the portage system on other distros. Do a search here and find it out.

Is portage possible on binary distros? I dont know how I would optimize via editing make.conf

[chucksaysword2]

Gentoo uses "emerge <program_name>" :D . And the installation does take a while. It took me 2 1/2 days to do it on my Pentium 2 350mhz. Slackware has a pretty neat package management tool but it does everything from source (Slack gurus correct me if I'm wrong) which means loads of compiling time.

What was the problem with Debian and X? I'm sure if you posted the exact error messages/problem, someone (althought probably not me) would be able to help you out.

EDIT: Alrite so they do call it portage. I just forgot OK!

[chucksaysword2]

Whoops! It appears that you already have posted the problem with X. Sorry about that!

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Just to get a piece of the action:

My PowerMac 8500

120 mhz 603e processor
128MB RAM
2GB Hard Drive
10BT Ethernet

I'm running Debian unstable on it right now. I've got a 2.4.19 kernel. If I wanted, I could always download and compile 2.4.20, as it does work well on PPC. With unstable, I have the option of running Gnome 2.2, or KDE 3.1, or ion, or Windowmaker, or whatever WM/DE you prefer. I run apt-get dist-update nearly weekly, and I've got a pretty up to date box.

I was talking with Manoj Srivastava, Debian secretary, lately, and he told me something amazing. Debian has a system of automated building and testing that they run on all of their software that's packaged with Debian. They absolutely do not put something into a stable distribution unless they are sure most, if not all of the bugs are squashed in it. With this build system, they are almost always guaranteed to have good, stable packages in their stable releases. They may not be the most recent versions in stable, but they are as advertised, stable.

Also, as a side note: I've been running Debian Unstable for quite some time now. Despite the name, I've not had a hint of instabilty yet... :D

[Syngin]

I don't think I've ever hear a distro ever mentioned in their ads. Do they have one of their own? Do they use RedHat?

[Chadduss]

although they don't really mention what they use I believe it is Redhat. Or was it Debian?

[ZAmodeo]

I may be wrong, but from what I understand they just promote Linux in general. I think they do promote RedHat and SuSE along with most other distros too.

[Icarus]

They had their own a couple years ago, and started a huge Linux push. But they seemed to of given up on it and now support the community in general. I think they have a strong push with Xandros though (which use to be Corel, who I think was bought by IBM...)

Ahh...but here is some insight

Key alliances
Caldera International Systems
Red Hat
SuSE
Turbolinux


That list almost looks like the United Linux list doesn't it? (minus Red Hat)

If someone want to dig some more, here's the IBM Linux Portal (http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/index.shtml) page

[ZAmodeo]

I checked out that link and I'm surprised IBM mentions SCO as one of the Linux distributors. I wonder if it's still possible to find IBM's old distro...

[El_Cu_Guy]

I think they have a strong push with Xandros though (which use to be Corel, who I think was bought by IBM...)

WTF!?!

Under the OS section of it's Global Solutions Directory IBM lists:

Red Hat Linux
United Linux (SuSE, SCO Group, Connectiva,TurboLinux)

[itor66]

Hummm.. As a newbie linux user still, I have an old laptop that I want to play with and also, incidently, use on my work LAN to putz around with.

Any distro's that are redhat based (close enuff to use redhat rpm's and claim redhat knowledge) that will run on a P166 laptop? ICEwm is a liteweight windows manager that I'd like to use more of.

any input, even more flame, welcome.

[moojuece]

check out www.distrowatch.com for a listing of many many distros with links and discriptions.....

[irlandes]

The last time I checked, www.cheapbytes.com still sold CD copies of Mandrake 7.02 (not 7.2) for i486, Air. it is compiled specially for 486's, and I ran it on a Dell 50 MHZ with about 48 MB memory, with full KDE. It was slow, but not as slow as molasses.

Not only was it compiled for 486, but it was a streamlined distro as well. I got it runing in a 540MB HD.

However, there are many distros, including mini-distros which will fit on a couple floppies, no GUI, but truly linux.

[LrngTheHardWay]

Hmmmm..... I was in a liquidation outlet the other day and saw a shelf full of the old RH releases. Boxes, manuals, shrinkwrap, the works.
I don't remember the prices being over 5 bucks, and only noticed that they had 6.1 and 6.2 in there.

If you think you can deal with something like that, scout around in your area for similar deals, or try anandatech's trading forum. You might get lucky.

If you'd rather have something that light today, try downloading it from:
ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/linux/6.2/en/iso/i386
It's one CD for the distro, one for the PowerTools, one for docs, and one for source rpms. The entire directory looks like a 4 hour download.

[facundosuarez]

Hi...

I want to install linux in an old system just to be able to practice some bash for my univ.

I need a distro (even if old) that will work with a 233 mhz 32mb ram machine with 200 mb of hd...

what can I d/l ?? remember I only need bash.

thanks!!!

[unixtool]

find an online "free" shell server. try --:> rootshell.be and load up a terminal like WRQ reflection x or other free software.

There you can get a shell to learn bash and not have to worry about loading up a small kernel with limited use on your box.

HTH

[facundosuarez]

can't do that...

the computer to receive the distro can't have an internet connection.

besides I need to create/erase files.

there has to be a small distro around. I know there is but I don't know the name or where to get it.

thanks anyway

[LrngTheHardWay]

You could take a look at Peanut Linux, which might fit the bill for you at a 341.2MB ISO:
ftp://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/peanut/Peanut-Linux-9.5/iso

It is one of the smaller distros out there.

[shadowrider]

i also heard that crux (http://www.fukt.bth.se/~per/crux/) and arch (http://archlinux.org/index.php) are quite small compared to other distros.

[pave79]

Just found a small distro from web...I haven't tried it yet.
BasicLinux (http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux/)

[myshkin]

hi, the vl forum is down atm so ill try posting my problems here.

this is the second time im trying to install vl3.2 on my main pc (works great on my dads computer). still the problem regarding cdrom install persists. it says it was unable to find veclinux.bz2 or something like that and drop me to the console. ive tried mounting with mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdd /mnt/loop , and was told that /dev/hdd is write protected and again kicked to console. from here on im totally clueless as to what to do next. any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Vador8088]

I would say that...all Linux is the best. :rolleyes:

[sclebo05]

i agree, can't we all just get along?

[Kaligraphic]

Have you tried mounting it read-only? (I believe the flag for mount is '-r'.) So I think the line to try is:
mount -r -t iso9660 /dev/hdd /mnt/loop

[facundosuarez]

I got & installed DragonLinux.... it rocks!!! a 40 MB download and I get bash, mc, lots of utils and it says it has X but I doubt it works.... anyway I don't need it..


thanks guys!!!

[sporkit]

i thought that any distro was small if installed without all the options.

cant you get RH9 on a 486 if you choose like the firewall or router settings. or is that just wayyyyy off?

[KarrottoP]

If you are worried about size i would download the first install cd for debian and then install it bare minimum. After you are done installing apt-get just the apps you need.

[NotQuiteSane]

I found this via a google search hint, hint

http://www.elinux.com/articles/distros/min_flop.jsp

Take your pick

NQS

[RedMap]

Does anyone know of a gaming Linux Distro out there?

What I'm really interested in is a distro with option of lots of free games and emulators (Amiga / Atari / Sega / Nintendo), with internet setup enough to play games over the interent.

Surely this would get a lot of people interested in Linux as so many people use that Windows thingy for games - then grow up with the machine and just use it for other applications because it is there.

If place like Wal Mart & Evesham Micros then installed this Distro instead of Lindows then that would increase real interest in Linux.

What do you think?

[Hayl]

One of Gentoo's kernel packages is gaming-sources.

Regarding the emulators, you can install those on any distro and most have packages for them.

PS: Gentoo also has an ebuild for WineX-cvs for people who are not subscibers. as simple as: emerge winex-cvs :)

[JjcampNR]

Gentoo also has a bootable gaming-cd. You just pop the cd in and boot off it and it will load their gaming kernel and it will allow you to play Unreal Tournament online. This is good if you just want to see what the performance will be like because the CD doesn't install anything and it can be used over any previous OS you have.

I toss this in on my Windows box ( had to throw more expensive/powerful hardware at the software problem ;) ) when I want to play Unreal and once I'm done I take it out and reboot and my Windows install comes back up exactly the way I left it.

Josh

[chucksaysword2]

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3498849150.html

[Icarus]

I was reading about the beta-test entries for the Linux port of Americas Army and he mentioned what distro people were using.
Gentoo was a clear #1 and LFS came second. The "roll-your-own" distros seem to be more common due to the fact that they are better optimized for the system.

I use Red Hat, but that is terrible for gaming, they have too many custom things added for performance with databases and office apps...drags the high end games down a bit.

[Hayl]

Originally posted by mahdi
I was reading about the beta-test entries for the Linux port of Americas Army and he mentioned what distro people were using.
Gentoo was a clear #1 and LFS came second. The "roll-your-own" distros seem to be more common due to the fact that they are better optimized for the system.

I use Red Hat, but that is terrible for gaming, they have too many custom things added for performance with databases and office apps...drags the high end games down a bit.

suggestion: roll your own non-red hat kernel. try the wolk kernel. it's really nice. just deselect the server optimizations and then the wokstation optimizations option appears :) im running the server optimized wolk 2.4.20 on my debian woody server now. f'ing debian woody still has 2.4.18 standard :( lol.

wolk.sf.net

[Icarus]

Originally posted by Hayl
suggestion: roll your own non-red hat kernel. try the wolk kernel. it's really nice. just deselect the server optimizations and then the wokstation optimizations option appears :) im running the server optimized wolk 2.4.20 on my debian woody server now. f'ing debian woody still has 2.4.18 standard :( lol.

wolk.sf.net Doesn't seem too bad, but Red Hat does some krazy things with their kernels. They are the only one that uses partition labeling, so when you roll a kernel from kernel.org, it doesn't work without changing fstab.

Also if you have Red Hat 9 you have other problems...like glibc 2.3.2
This has caused more then a few problems and not only with Wine. There are work arounds for all of this and I like Red Hat more with every release they do, it's just these little things, you know? ;)

I'm going to be installing Gentoo soon on my PC (triple boot win98, RH9 and Gentoo) play with that some and mostly with games.

-----------------
All spelling mistakes were on purpose...really, they were ;)

[JamminJoeyB]

OK, been under a rock or something.

There is a beta of Americas Army for Linux? Someone post a link for information. This is the only game I play at all and a Linux port would be the bomb.

Say good bye to MS for good if they release this on Linux.

[Icarus]

Sorry, it's booked...but here's the link about the applications, a fun read ;)
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1433

[Hayl]

Originally posted by mahdi
Also if you have Red Hat 9 you have other problems...like glibc 2.3.2

i have glibc2.3.2 on my gentoo box. only problem i have had is crossover plugin. crossover office is fine. plugin will be fixed is a few weeks when 2.0 comes out :) WineX seems fine for me as well.

]I'm going to be installing Gentoo soon on my PC (triple boot win98, RH9 and Gentoo) play with that some and mostly with games.

cool

[Hayl]

Originally posted by JamminJoeyB
Americas Army
what is it?

is it the first person shooter that the US Army made?

[Icarus]

Originally posted by Hayl
what is it?

is it the first person shooter that the US Army made? That is exactly what it is. The US Army made a game off the Unreal Warefare engine (now called Unreal Tech) and distrubited it for free...

It's purpose was to be a recruting tool. Like, this guy is really good with squad tactics in the game and he's 19...call him ;)

http://www.americasarmy.com/

[JamminJoeyB]

Ok, found that article already. Just wish there was some status on the development.

I don't really need to be a beta tester. I just want to play without booting to win98.

[ashibaka]

If you need to turn your computer into a gaming box, just edit your Xsession so that you run FVWM instead of KDE/GNOME. Notice the speed boost...

[Darksamurai]

I like Red Hat 9.0... but I haven't had too much of a chance to play with Mandrake, so I'm not gonna say I know best... :(

I had early versions of RH, Mandrake and TurboLinux that refused to load on my rig... they'd load for like 2 hours and then hang. I'm really glad the drivers have come so far so I can get crackin' on learning everything!

[sarah31]

you might want to check out:
damnsmalllinux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/)

[markanini]

I use my computer for editing and recording music with cubase sx, surfing the internet, downlaoding music and video, and sometimes playing 3d shooter games. I use Windows XP. I'm thinking about givng linux a try. I heard that a new kernel 2.6 with lots of new features will come out soon. Should i wait for it to come first? How is harware support Are there drivers for my radeon 9000 pro? And my canon printer and scanner??? What distrobiution can you recommend??? I would be good if it would be able to run my windows programs and acess my files that re on a ntfs filesystem. I heard Caldera is dektop frendly...

[Raoul_Duke]

The 2.6 range of kernels aren't out for a month or so but the pre-release 2.5 kernels are available. they have most of the 2.6 features but aren't 100% stable.

Internet, music and video will be fine with any distro but do a bit of research for music packages. There's a lot of good music creation/editing software about but it's still in it's infancy compared to microsoft/apple. You won't find anything quite as powerful as Cubase just yet, but give it another 6 months or so and some of the better packages will start to really mature ;-)

There's a few different ways of running windows apps in linux each with their own pros and cons. I'd suggest making a shortlist of apps you can't get in linux and finding out the best way of making those work. It's not guarenteed one emulator/VirtualM will do all of them.

Hope this helps :)

edit: games are a bit hit and miss as well......but there are native ports of UT, UT2003, Quakes 1, 2, and 3, and people have had success getting other games like Counter-Strike working in wine

[randabis]

SuSE 8.2 comes with a great variety of music tools. You might wanna give it a shot. It should work with your hardware.

[N452]

If your just playing games and editing music you would be better of using a mac or windows. Mozilla isnt that fantastic for internet either.

[Raoul_Duke]

Originally posted by N452
If your just playing games and editing music you would be better of using a mac or windows. Mozilla isnt that fantastic for internet either.

I disagree (no offence though).....i think mozilla is the best browser out there :)

[godhead]

i've been doing light research on linux.

is there a list online of what hardware each version supports?

so I can narrow down my choices a little bit(hopefully)

[sclebo05]

each distro will have a hardware compatibility list. or post your hardware and maybe you will get lucky and someone can tell you what you can run.

[godhead]

ok, my specs are now in my sig.

should all be there, if I am missing something just ask.

[lhm0155]

http://www.toms.net/rb/
this is the smallest fits on a single 1.44mb floppy usually used for system recovery, but can be used in other ways, used it and another program one time to let my friend into his win2k box, changed the administrator password without a problem

[sclebo05]

standard mobo? as in a brand name? i would assume so, you spent the time and effort to build a good machine (same as mine :D ) so if your mobo is something fairly common, then you should have no trouble with major distros. by this i mean redhead, mandie, and maybe even debbie, etc...

[godhead]

my custom made Alienware.

yes I know alienware are over priced, but i love this thing(except for my mouse right now.)

not sure what you mean by mobo(not used to all the terms you guys use here)

[sclebo05]

in that case, you should be good. alienware uses asus motherboards (i think). any major distro should be good for you.

by mobo i mean motherboard, the crazy looking circuitboard everything plugs into.

give any of the major versions of linux a try, i have a system almost identical to yours and went through a period of distro-hopping - every major one i tried worked.

for a snippet of what each one is about go to www.distrowatch.com its a good place to start

[avrfan]

hi All,

This is my first post to this forum. Anyways, I plan to try installing Linux onto my old 486 box. It has a 1Gb harddrive, no CDROM and just floppy and perhaps an old ISA NIC.

Which Distribution would have the best support for old school hardware? Do the latest Releases typically lose support for old hardware and only keep adding support for the newest most popular devices?

What if none of my devices are Plug and Play? What if my bios/motherboard doesn't support plug and play? What if I don't even know the make and model of my NIC and Motherboard and Chipset?

Dave
~~~

I think this is a good newbie question for y'all.

[avrfan]

hi All Again,

RE: Wich Linux is Best???

I was browsing the website recommended earlier on this thread: www.DistroWatch.org and found the section "CD Based Distributions" to be very interesting and possible very helpful for newbies looking for a good distro to try without alot of hassle.

Here's the direct link:
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd

Basically they have a list of distributions which will run directly from a bootable CD without requiring installation to the harddrive. Just download the .iso image, burn to CD, put in drive, and reboot computer. When finished remove CD and reboot to your old existing OS on your hard drive. Only thing is your computer must support boot from CD.

Note: Some of these Distros are compact in size from like 48MB to 320Mb which makes for fast download if your anxious to see Linux run on your system.

Dave

[sclebo05]

good call, i forgot to mention that. if you are going to try a cd based distro just to get your feet wet, try knoppix. that is how i converted my roommate ;)

[Tom Sweet]

I had best results with SuSE 8.1 (I upgraded KDE to 3.1 after install). I installed SuSE on three computers and my Dell Latitude laptop. It went perfectly without a hitch, except the laptop screen resolution had to be set in XFree83, but that wasn't a big deal. Also, I use a fast 72Mbps 802.11a wireless LAN, and SuSE didn't have the driver for my SMC 2735W wireless card. It has drivers for 802.11b cards, but the 802.11a is too new. SMC told me they had drivers for RedHat.

I bought RedHat's latest release in February 2003. I DID NOT have the ease of installation, and went back to SuSE.

I've tried some other distributions in the past (Mandrake), but for desktop use, SuSE offers the best support and ease of installation.

Good luck.

[avrfan]

I downloaded the files for Mandrake 9.0 and it took up like 3.5GB on my hard drive! What the hell??? I wanted to copy that over to another hard drive because I don't have a CD Burner and then install from the disk but that hard drive is only 2GB!

How can I install Linux if the installation files are almost 4GB and then the install requirements are probably at least 500MB to 1GB additional?

Anyone got some advice about this? What do I need and what don't I need? How can I trim this distro install files down to a reasonable like say 1GB of files and then install a minimal install?

My PC is an old 486 with floppy and 1GB Hard drive and ISA NIC and basic SVGA ISA video card

My other PC is a Pentium I 200Mhz with 2 GB Harddrive floppy and no CD and basic ISA or PCI NIC.

Dave

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

avrfan:

Don't put mandrake on either of those boxes. For one, mandrake's compiled to work on 586's and higher, thus counting out the 486. If you try and install Mandrake on either of those boxes, you're setting yourself up for a BIG disappointment, if it will even install.

Try a distro like Vector Linux, Slackware, or Debian. I've run Slack and Debian on a 486 33mhz machine with 8MB RAM. Granted, that's not really powerful enough to run X, but you could get a satisfactory desktop setup running with Debian or Slackware on the 200mhz machine you have.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by Fahrenheit451
You mean a single /home partition for 2 or even more different distros?

I know this can be done w/ the swap partition.

Anyway, will there be any kind of effect when booting into any of the distro?

Yes, you can do this with 2 or more distros. The trick is making sure all of your UIDs and GIDs are the same on all of the systems. For instance, say you have two users, bob and tom, and you dual boot between RedHat and Debian.

If user bob has the UID of 1001 in RedHat, and user tom has the UID of 1001 in Debian, then bob would have access to tom's files in RedHat, and tom would have access to bob's files in debian. You'd have to make sure that bob had UID 1001 in both systems and tom had some other UID.

It's not that hard to do, it just takes some forethought.

[avrfan]

Originally posted by Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
avrfan:

Don't put mandrake on either of those boxes. For one, mandrake's compiled to work on 586's and higher, thus counting out the 486. If you try and install Mandrake on either of those boxes, you're setting yourself up for a BIG disappointment, if it will even install.

Try a distro like Vector Linux, Slackware, or Debian. I've run Slack and Debian on a 486 33mhz machine with 8MB RAM. Granted, that's not really powerful enough to run X, but you could get a satisfactory desktop setup running with Debian or Slackware on the 200mhz machine you have.

THANKS Alex. I was in for some trouble I suppose. I don't know why I didn't see anything about minimum system requirements on the websites. The impression we get as newbies is that Linux will run on anything unlike Microsoft Windows which many consider to be "BLOATWARE".

I was shocked that the Mandrake 9.x download was over 3GB! I always thought linux was a "LEAN AND MEAN OS" but I suppose that as these companies start trying to commercialize linux they just start to be like Microsoft in the sense of creating "Bloatware" and not supporting "LEGACY HARDWARE" anymore.

RE: the other Distros you mentioned, do you know how large there downloads are for install?

Thanks,
Dave

[Haseldow]

Hi All!

I just got my hands on an suffered old 486 laptop. The screen had broken apart, the plastic around it was heavily fractured and the connectors were a mess. Nothing a 3mm drill, a few metal reinforcements and a soleding-iron couldn't fix.

It was really fun fixing it, but now I'm left with a dilemma of what to do with it. I thought I could try installing some old (or new minimalist) distro in it and see what it can do. Now the problem is that it only has a floppy drive. I can install a network card in the one and only PCMCIA slot and install the OS over network, but that seems to me to be too much work.

Can anyone suggest a easy-to-install distro that can be installed from floppies or has an installer with support for 10/100 3com Megahertz 3CCFEM556B PC-Card? I would prefer that it has some window manager.

And here's some machine specs if anyone's interested :)
Compaq Contura Aero 4/33C (weights only 1,6Kg with battery and is quite small 26cm x 18cm x 3cm).
486SX/33
250MB HD (wow! :D )
4MB RAM

Any suggesions?

<EDIT>Damn...the floppy drive uses the PCMCIA slot, so it's either floppy or network card. :mad: </EDIT>

Regards,
-Haseldow

[gibhunter]

Argh! I tried MDK9.1 and Redhat9 and both are easily slower and more bloated than Win2k on two different boxes both with 128MB of ram and 266MHZ Pentium2.

I'd try Debian, but all their packages are outdated, Suse is useless as they don't offer ISOs and and forget about installing a streamlined version of Gentoo as compilation time borders on rediculous.

Debian seems like a perfect answer to my dilemma, but most of their packages are old. Then again, the boxes I'm trying to put it on are old as well.;)

Still, you would think that basic installs of Mandrake or Redhat would pride themselves on being faster out of the box than a MS OS, unfortunately this is not true. Applications take forever to load and don't even TRY multitasking:rolleyes:

[LinuxLuke]

use vector, it's fast as hell I bet it'll take no more than 30 seconds to boot, and if it does, your hardware is garbage

Vector Linux (http://www.ibiblio.org/vectorlinux/)

[Hayl]

1. take a look into using hdparm to spped up your hard disks. they are set up to be "unoptimized for speed" by default with linux in most hases.
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/hdparm.html

2. for Red Hat and Mandrake it wouldn't hurt to recompile a custom kernel. their kernels are extremely bloated with every option turned on and probably turned on for stuff you don't have.

3. consider not using kde or gnome as they tend to be bloated.

[gibhunter]

Downloading Vector Linux as I type this. I'll let you guys know tomorrow how it goes. Thanks!

[shakin]

Linux is slower because X is a horrible GUI. Running a heavy desktop/WM like Gnome or KDE on top only makes it worse. Linux will run much quicker than Windows when you don't include desktop speed. This is a primary reason why Linux has made such massive progress replacing Windows on the server, but not on the desktop.

On a low-end maching you should be installing an older distro, or at least one that lets you choose an older version of X (3.xx?) and a window manager like Blackbox.

[Darksamurai]

When I started with Win XP, it wasn't putting out the power I wanted... I went in and tweaked the crap out of it (visual performance settings, services altering, optomizing the registry for performance, etc...)

Red Hat 9 has been the same journey... everytime I learn more stuff I DON'T need, I can speed it up even more... Still, for an old computer like that... I'd say RH 9 is overkill (it's still running a bit sluggish and I have an Athlon 1800+ running it with 256 Megs of PC-2100 DDR)

BTW: if you're not dual-booting with Windows, disable "Shadowing" in your BIOS, it'll speed up the works.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I've installed Slackware on that exact laptop.

You do have some options for installing. Here's some of them:

You could do a floppy install. But that would take FOREVER, and it would probably take about 200 floppies.

You could do a PLIP install. PLIP is Parallel Line IP, which allows you to network two PCs together with a special "crossover" parallel cable. There are diagrams online to make them, and you can even buy them pre made.

Probably the most effective route would be to use a Parallel port CDROM. They still make them, and they could probably be found for cheap.

I have done both of the last two options. PLIP is pretty slow, but it works in a pinch. The Parallel port CDROM was as quick as I could get things. I had the luxury of installing with 8MB of RAM, which made things a bit easier, and even a tad bit quicker. Overall, it took about 4 hours to get a minimal install running on that laptop.

I used the 4MB laptop HOWTO (http://http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/4mb-Laptops.html) as a starting point for my install.

[2ndsign]

hey guys!

a friend gave me an old ibm(1987) computer that he didnt know much about.

well it has 4 megs of ram:eek:

37 meg hard drive:eek:

no cdrom or any hope of installing one:eek:

what is a small linux distro i can install to the hard drive?ill see if i can up the ram to get a gui!

its running windows 3.1

thanx in advance!!

[leonpmu]

Peanut linux or Vectorlinux

How big is the harddisk??

[Raoul_Duke]

I seriously wouldn't try anything with a GUI until there's more RAM.

Check out www.distrowatch.com for floppy based distros ;)

[Haseldow]

Yes the Slackware way is the only way I guess. I found TinyLinux which is a distro based on Slackware but it had great tools and apps ready at their web-page (http://tiny.seul.org/en/index.html).

I think I'll start from there until I get a kernel ready and I think the PLIP thingie would be a great idea, since I allready have a null modem cable (parallel M - parallel M) ready. If you have a URL to a PLIP howto ready at hand, that would be great (since I have never tested it before). Otherwise I think I can find it while the laptop is ticking the bits in their right places. :)

-Haseldow

[2ndsign]

distrowatch excludes floppy based distros


the hard disk is 37 meg as stated before.


this ibm is really a typewriter if you ask me!:mad:

[Fryguy8]

37mb is TIGHT for a distro lol :)

You are probably going to have to use nonstandard c libs and stuff to fit that. I probably wouldn't even bother without a slightly bigger hard drive and more ram.

[dkeav]

you might check out "core" linux

[dkeav]

dude i have a 340mb hd out of a 486 i will give you, cause i just dont think your going to get that to work, definatly no X, peanut is not an option, i dont know why everyone thinks its for old comps, it has the latest stuff, just not much of it, either way its like over 400mb, you might look at "corelinux", or some of the rescue floppy bases that would make it atleast capable of lynx, ssh, stuff like that

[leonpmu]

I have a a cd with peanut and vector on, the ISO of each is about 200MB, which aint much, so I'm not sure where dkeav saw his 400MB peanut image, maybe that was with KDE etc installed, but I agree that hard disk is for a guiless system , hey that could be a GREAT firewall box!!!:D

[Artimus]

You'd probably be best off starting with a floppy distro and adding to it. Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear though.

[sharth]

Originally posted by Artimus
You'd probably be best off starting with a floppy distro and adding to it. Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear though. yeah. and don't use a journeling filesystem

[sasKuatch]

http://www.sunsite.auc.dk/mulinux/

It's got X, it's got Netscape, tools, and everything you need and fits on several floppies, giving you plenty of drive space left over. And it appears to work with 4mb RAM, as well as being able to install to the the hard drive.

Rob

[dkeav]

you can thank me later (http://freshmeat.net/projects/natld/?topic_id=55%2C91)

2-Disk X window embedded Linux
by mungkie - Tuesday, November 5th 2002 16:50 PST Section: Software



About:
2-Disk X window embedded Linux is a tiny net-centric Linux that aims at portable secure remote system usage. It contains many utilities including: X Windows, vncviewer, rdesktop, a Web browser, a file manager, a text editor, a terminal, a window manager, a menu system, a dialog system, X scripting facilities, and many others. It aims to work from 1 or 2 floppy disks in any remote location.

[Haseldow]

I didn't get far using the 4mb Laptop HOWTO (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/4mb-Laptops-5.html) .

I did the partitions using MiniLinux.
Primary 1: 10MB temporary root during installation (will be /home after installation)
Primary 2: 20MB swap
Primary 3: 30MB (root partition after install)
Primary 4: 190MB (/usr after install)

I did the mkfs.ext2 with MiniLinux also, checked that the partitions worked OK.

Now when I try to start muLinux from the floppies (phase 7 in the howto) I get:
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 02:1c

Do I need to do something to the partitions or what might be wrong.

I tried the lm (low memory) and 2 mulinux (standard 1440K floppies) bootdisks but both give the same error. I tried using several floppies, so I doubt that the problem is with bad sectors.

Some pointers please... :confused:

-Haseldow

[Nadav]

Hi, I myself am a linux newbie (with no linux installed atm :P)
I also want to install Linux with Hebrew support (I'll install only after I have presented my HTML site for school, so I get a grade :P).
I've found some sites that talk about it, there's a distro based on Peanut that was built with hebrew in mind. It's called Boten
Boten Site (http://www.mpthrill.com/peanut/)

I might give it a shot, but I havn't heard alot of good things from Peanut (for newbies :P).
So I might just try and install some big linux distro (or smth else that sounds good :P)
GL, if you install Boten or anyother distro, please let me know about your Hebrew experiment :D
Another thing, OpenOffice 1.1beta has been released with Hebrew support...
OpenOffice Israel (http://www.openoffice.org.il/)

[OldToker]

Just my two cents..

I have tried many different flavors of Linux and finally decided on Mandrake... I know some of you don't like it.. but then again this is such a personal thing..

But it seems that every where I read people prety much agree that for someone *JUST* leaving the M$ World that Mandrake is the way to go..

Like I said just my two cents tho. :)
Hope this helps
BTW Here's the link
www.mandrake.com

[sclebo05]

The reason that the downloads are 3 Gigs is because you are not just getting the OS - you are getting the OS and pretty much all the software you will need. Compared to any M$ system it is still going to take up less space with the same capability.

[flowrider]

Here's the hardware I want to load linux on to.

1. P 200mmx, 64 mb ram, old vid card, 20gig drive,

2. NEC P100 laptop, 40 mb ram, 1 gig drive

I am assuming that the laptop will have to be very lean.

So what do you think? Distro and version if possible please.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Try doing a forum search on "Old Hardware".

This topic's been gone over at least twice in the past week and a half. Try looking in the Hardware forum, too. I believe the thread in that one's still on page 1 or 2...

[sajchurchey]

Linux distros typically work w/ older hardware w/ no problem. That's what it was made for. You just have to watch the amount of RAM for the purposes of a GUI.

Typically 64MB is recommended for GUI for older distros (SuSE and RH 7.3 and earlier should work fine).

Any less than that, you're talking about really older distros which are less user friendly, or an entire command line system.

[flowrider]

Thank you for the positive reply Sarchurhey and not just another RTFM.

Now where do you suppose I could find an old distro like RH7.3?

Will that install on the laptop do ya think? It does only have a gig of hd space. Man, I remember when I bought it and a gig of space could last you a lifetime! :lol:

[FreddyAT]

Hi,

the best Linux you can have is a self-made Linux, no distribution... have a look at www.linuxfromscratch.org - it's a long manual how to create your own linux... it is at first not as comfortable as distributions but it is much faster!!!

freddy

[sajchurchey]

RH distros clear back to 5.x can be downloaded from their website. You may still be able to buy a boxed set from there store. I would recommend a distro w/ KDE 2.x rather than the 3.x that have been coming out kind of the system requirements. You're bound to be able to download older distros from somewhere.

[Iridesce]

Greetings,

Relatively new to Linux, a year or so - while I run Win2K on work machine, I wanted to get away from M$ and all its money and proprietary issues.

I am not a geek, only a curious user that has seen that Linux works without too much trouble and is a viable alternative. Also am very energized by the work done by the Open Office folks - I run all of the non database documents I usually run in M$ Office ( except of course the database - and am learning MySQL for that ... )

I have run Mandrake 9.1 with little problems - it runs better than my Win2K setup and the whole idea of open source rocks my box and world.

Anyhow, welcome to the Linux world - once here, you will never leave.

Enjoy

[hwb0014]

If you want to delve into deeper learning try another distro such as slackware and debian......

Personally, if you really want to get away from the microshaft garbage then you should get on to another distro anyway......Redhat and Mandrake cater to the Windoze crowd..

[Culbert]

Well, after trying a huge handful of distros out there I've decided a few top choices.

1st place - Suse 8.2 - very automated - which rocks for the linux newbie!!

2nd place - Slackware 9.0 (using dropline Gnome) - a very slick and extremely stable distro

3rd place - Knoppix 3.2 - Just because it's so darn good & you can install it on your hard drive if you want to.

4th place - Vector Linux Soho 3.2 - It's small, it's quick, and support is absolutely incredible and it's based on Slack which makes it stable as heck!

5th place - Mandrake 9.1 - Mandrake is almost as user friendly as Suse, but Mandrake still has a few bugs to work out but for the most part is a great distro

[Culbert]

Originally posted by hwb0014
If you want to delve into deeper learning try another distro such as slackware and debian......

Personally, if you really want to get away from the microshaft garbage then you should get on to another distro anyway......Redhat and Mandrake cater to the Windoze crowd..

Just a quick note to add here: Don't dive too quick into it. I'm not saying this will happen to everyone, but all the ones I've seen that go straight to an experienced distro get burnt out and they burn out quick! My advice is to start with a beginners version. Don't worry about learning real quick and don't get suckered into thinking that if you use Mandrake that you aren't a "true" linux user - some Linux users can be quite cruel about that, don't let it bug you.

[hwb0014]

Just a quick note to add here: Don't dive too quick into it.

--->one year is long enough with mandrake

I'm not saying this will happen to everyone, but all the ones I've seen that go straight to an experienced distro get burnt out and they burn out quick!

--->true and I agree, but...getting thrown into the fire is probably the quickest way to learn the most important things fast!! That's how I learned Solaris here at work


My advice is to start with a beginners version. Don't worry about learning real quick and don't get suckered into thinking that if you use Mandrake that you aren't a "true" linux user - some Linux users can be quite cruel about that, don't let it bug you.

--->We arent suckering him....just letting him know what his next step should be since he's been with Mandrake for a year now...
The bottomline is to learn something....

[Culbert]

You got a point there... I was forced to learn stuff pretty quick when things weren't going well. Of course you have to have a good source of support too though. I had problems with Vector Linux and their support was out of this world. I learned a lot using that distro.

[hwb0014]

Thats the beauty of linux...it might not have the marketing potential of a Microshaft or the financial backing, but give it another five years or so, and we shall see how the progress goes as far as converting people from Micros-->Unix user. If you look around, how many unix people are converting from unix into Microsoft saying how great Microsoft's code is..lol

[sclebo05]

i agree with everything said in the above few posts. as long as you learn something, anything, it will create awareness and spur the community on in some way. the open source movement is truly a unique and interesting anomoly

[medium]

i have a computer :
133 mhz
49 ram
3 hardrives - 1 for winnt the other one - half for dos and the other for a would be linux installation and a third one is for my fbsd.
i have limited internet access - i only use free netzero or aol in winnt, so i can't afford to download something, and then reboot, find out that i didn't get some dependency, reboot again and dowload the dependency, so i need some nice and small distro to work with, i don't wanna download 3 0r 4 disks for a single distro. i also would appreciate any help in using netzero or aol on linux
thanks for your help...

[deathadder]

you could try Knoppix, i havent used it but ive heard it has great hardware support and it will run from 1 cd, if u wanted to install it after tryin it you could, also next to the logo at the top of the page is a link to the search page there dozen of questions like this some of the other threads may help

HTH

[quip]

NOT ANOTHER DISTRO QUESTION!!!!;)

I know, but read on and see if you have an answer please.

I recently got a real p.o.s. box for free from a family member, and wanted to use it to play. Only two months into linux, I want to put an older distro on it, figuring it would run better than windows. So I pick redhat 7.1 based on its min. req. and slim down the install to 600 mb or so.

Okay, quit laughing.
I know it's still a bloated distro, but it went on fine until I tried to start x. It only has 990k of video memory, integrated, and rh tells me that it's not enough to start x in any configuration. I played around with my x86config but it's not going to happen. I need x as I am not good enough (nor want to) stay in console always.

THE BIG QUESTION: Does anyone know (for sure, as in you have personally witnessed it) of a distro that can run x on such low video memory? I don't care how old or stripped.
thanks

[jetblackz]

You don't say the other speces. it's hard to tell.

I like www.crux.nu. It's a minimalist. It uses 16 out of 256MB RAM after bootup before X. I trimmed it down to the bone when compiling the kernel. But I don't know the X video RAM requirement. The default is twm which should run on your box. Don't expect anything fancy.

If you need help installing it, gimme a shout.

[quip]

sorry, specs:
pentium 75
24 mb ram
vid is integrated on the board

four isa slots, two pci (I am also trying to get my hands on an old pci card)

I appreciate the response. Options are exactly what I am looking for. Nothing fancy is fine. I'll check it out and might take you up on your offer.

[jholl]

Hello I am wanting some guidance on a new distro. I am tired of the distros i have used in the path. To me Redhat has been junk since 7.2 all the newer ones have been slow and dependency hell. Slackware is to more like Unix than Linux and I have run in to troubles getting it to comply with some software. Mandrake was also laggy and didn't like some of my hardware, Lycoris was pretty but slow, Caldera was a pain with dependencies. I want a Linux that is fast, plays nice, does is what it is hyped up to be, and looks good. Is there any way to just start from a kernel with out having to be a super genius programmer? That way I could get every thing I want.

Should I be looking into Debian?

Bye the way since i mentioned slow so much i should say what I’m running.

P3 933
384 mb ram
<8 ms 7200 rpm IDE hdd
GeForce 2 32mb

jh

[Icarus]

www.gentoo.org

Sure it will take you 3 days to get it up and running with a GUI...but it will be fast, smooth, uncluttered and you will learn more then you ever wanted to know about Linux :)

Of course that is going from a stage 1 install....the stage 3 would only take about a-day-and-a-half ;)

[serz]

Give a try to Redhat :P

[Ulixes]

...or Linux From Scratch.

[scott_R]

You're going to have a little trouble doing things through netzero. For one thing, netzero doesn't work with linux (their advertisements only work with windows and IE, last time I checked, and that's how you get free internet). For another, most distributions will put you over your free hours to download. A barebones linux system that's not userfriendly, and doesn't do much will run a couple dozen megs. Basically, you'll end up with freebsd like that. Knoppix wont work on a 133. Debian will, and you can install a minimalist system. Your best bet might also be to try one of the mini distributions on google:
.
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/Distributions/Tiny/
.
Anyway, a lot of the newer distros require more powerful machines, or a lot of downloading.

[gmoreno]

I would recommend Debian or Gentoo. Both wont autodetect your hardware and set it up but once you have everything running it is great. I actuall love Slack but all the dependencies drove me nuts and thats why I've had Debian on my boxen for 2 years now.

[jholl]

Thanks Gentoo sounds exactally like what i want.

[madcompnerd]

Old system:
Vector Linux
There's just no contest. If you use X Debian is probably gonna be a lot for that system.
Vector is one ISO, 225MB, installs in 435MB with X and iceWM. It's pretty easy to use.

But like he said, netzero is probably not gonna work in Linux. You might switch to a little better internet service, like prodigy(last I knew they don't try to make you use any bloatware to get online :)).

[sarah31]

flame

:rolleyes: give me your biased opinion on what to use:rolleyes:

i have a fast computer and want a fast distro but i am completely unable to search distrowatch for a distro.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

gentoo gentoo is the bestest because i used a rpm distro before and could not figure out how to solve dependencies:rolleyes:

man i get so tired of these threads and the recommendation of gentoo and debian as being the only alternatives.

do yourself a favor and actually try out a bunch of distros. look on distrowatch or one of the other linux sites read up on distros on their sites stop by their forums or irc channels.

there is ALOT of distros out there and many that are just as good or better than gentoo and debian.

/flame

[Slovak]

The most laptop/notebook friendly
:confused:

[medium]

thanks i think i'm gonna go with damnsmallinux from guess what (damnsmalllinux.org or something like that). it's debain based and the screenshots with fluxbox (or blackbox) look nice. it's around 50 mb.

[tommyj27]

i've been using slackware 8.1 on mine, no worries :)

[serz]

I think that Redhat is. Cause is distro that has more hardware compatibility.

[stevewabc]

Lets clean this up HERE?:D

You want speed and no Dep. Hell..Here it is :

#1 is Gentoo (I dont have time for the set..)

#2 is Slackware or Debian (both are ok)

#3 Libranet2.8 =100% Debian It rocks and is just as fast as Slackware or Gentoo :D :D :D

Its ok, this is only one mans likings!!!! But I bet I hit the nail on the head....

[stevewabc]

Labranet2.8 will keep you from the Dep. Hell and give you speed Garenteed.. You will not look back agin !!!!!!

[sarah31]

well...libranet as fast as gentoo? i seriously dobt that. care to post your benchmarks?

[jetblackz]

Unfortunately, crux is i586-optimised. Not for P1.

You can always take a look at

www.vectorlinux.com

which runs on 386 and 16mb RAM. Not SOHO. Just regular version.

[miker]

less than 1MB for graphics memory really sux!

if you poke around in the BIOS, can you allocate more system memory to graphics? i think 4MB is minimum for 1024x768 at 16bit colour (or do the maths to know for sure)

if not, i'd imagine 990K would be enough for 640x480 in 256 colours using vesa framebuffer since i'd imagine it's some obscure onboard graphics chipset?

why don't you try a 'live' distro like morphix or knoppix - they have excellent hardware detection and if everything works you can then install it to your hard-drive and you'll be running debian with all its nice aptness.

[quip]

I will take a look at the bios, but I don't think that allocating more memory is an option.
The really frustrating part is that the box had windows 98 on it before the install, and while it was slow, took up almost the whole hd, it was working. Aaarrrggghhhh!:rolleyes:
I am now working my way through some other distros, namely slack and vector. The biggest pain in the a** though has been that the machine will not boot from cd even though it is an option in the bios! I have been making boot floppies like its my job!:D
If these don't work, I'll try morphix and knoppix. I'm just concerned about using them with the 8x cdrom and 75 mhz processor.

[miker]

how about slapping in a 32MB PCI card, like nVidia Vanta?

assuming there's a spare slot of course ;-)

hmmm, i get your point about running a live CD distro .. could be most unpleasant! could be an easy way to get debian onto the system though ... using apt/debian you will really be spoilt for choice for software and repositories ...

win98? i remember that. very entertaining stuff...

http://cluscon.dynu.com/images/win98_entertaining.png

[quip]

Two pci slots, one for nic, one for vid, and I would love to get one like 32 or something, but I am doing this (or trying at least) for real cheap, i.e. I don't want to pay more than ten or fifteen bucks for some old junk card to go into a machine that I'm just toying with.
I have an extra 32 mb nvidia tnt, but it is an agp card, and this machine does not have any of those slots!
OOOLLLLDDDD!!;)

[jetblackz]

Update your BIOS.

[quip]

Update my bios? Where and how?

[Antibiotic]

I think you'll have no problem of getting old PCI/ISA video card with 1-2 meg of ram for really really cheap, if not free.

My experience is that you need at least 2 meg of vid ram to run Xserver smoothly. My KDE on RH7 was looking really really crappy with 1 meg.


I would suggest trying to find S3 Trio64V/Trio64V2, that card gave me really good impressions, it even had 2d acceleration

[quip]

got ahold of the exact card you speak of antibiotic...now x shows up, but only takes up half the screen and with huge fonts.
I have tried editing the xf86configs and nothing seems to work. Now I have tried moving on to other distros, but they all give me kernel panic during installation.
Setting up these old boxes are beginning to be a real pain in the arse. All I wanted to do was have a couple to learn on (networking, compiling kernels, etc.) so I wouldn't care if I killed them. Now I am wondering if I will ever get there.:mad:

[Antibiotic]

Hm, weird...mine worked out of the box when I installed RH7..

Anyway, if you want linux for learning, dont be scared to put it onto your primary machine. Get yourself Mandrake 9.1, its so far THE most user friendly distro (that I know of), install it on a separate drive from windows one. That way you wont lose windows if you mess up linux. Mandrake 9.1 installation picked up my WinXP partition on a breeze.

One thing tho, it will install its own boot loader in place of windows one, although I think once on place, it will be working even if there's no linux installed

Edit> by separate drive, I mean separate _physical_ drive, like a separate device

Edit again> Also, huge fonts maybe because your resolution is ridiculously low, say like 320*240 or something like that

[mr orion77]

ive only left the beginer stage and i consider myself intermediate. ive tried suse 7.3, debian woody, drake 9 and slackware 9.

if slackware had an apt like system it would be perfect. being a midpoint between original unix and system v is great and slackware is small so you can manage it and know whats going on. its just the package management that lets it down.

[Iridesce]

Thanks for the encouragement and flames I think sclebo05 and hwb0014 probably sum up my feelings about the subject - yes, though playing with Mandrake for a year, I am still much a newbie

The thing is, I imagine most who post here are young single people with time on their hands and/or computer professionals who have made understanding binary their life's work. Thanks to all of you who can and do take the time to advance the cause of Linux.

I fit into neither of those categories - I am mid 40s, have a partner, kids and a career of my own - and don't have tons of time to play with the intracacies (sp?) that many of you seem to devote much time and effort to - again, thanks for the devotion and work. Sometimes it seems that scouring boards for my most recent challenge is about as much time as I can give to it.

On the positive side, even though I am quite ignorant of the little stuff, about 15 other people now have Linux in their boxes as a result of my encouraging ( read hounding ... ) them to try this very cool and totally non M$ OS and its related applications. ( and yes, most are dual boot on a single drive ) Do they use it exclusively at this point, probably not. Are they now aware that they do have a real choice - yes .

It seems to me that what we all want is broader use of this wonder regardless of the level of computer proficiency - In the circles I run around in, most have the " put the key in and have it run " mentality. Does that make them bad people - I don't think so, they just have different foci and passions in their lives.

Finally and again - thanks to all of you who keep this option going - and make sure that any of your sites have a paypal type contribution option - I probably spend $20/month contributing in $1, $2 or $5 amounts where I have that option - I realize that few are retiring on their time and energy put into this and also know that having someone pay for the Red Bull and takeout is not a bad thing.

[PastorEd]

Originally posted by avrfan
[B]hi All,

Anyways, I plan to try installing Linux onto my old 486 box. It has a 1Gb harddrive, no CDROM and just floppy and perhaps an old ISA NIC.

You say that your system does NOT have a CDROM drive? in that case, you might want to check out TINY LINUX. It's on a bunch of floppies. You ALSO might want to do a search for DeLi (Desktop Lite) Linux. I'm not sure if they have a floppy distro or not. But your lack of a CDROM will limit you from many of the newer distributions.

I'd STRONGLY suggest that if it's at ALL possible that you put a CDROM in that older box. It will make installing Linux a LOT easier.

Which Distribution would have the best support for old school hardware? Do the latest Releases typically lose support for old hardware and only keep adding support for the newest most popular devices?

To be honest, I'm not sure WHAT many of the "newest" distros are doing about older hardware. If I were you, I'd figure out what year it was when your hardware was NEW... and then do a Google on "best Linux of _year_". My GUESS is it will come up with some of the older mandrake releases.

What if none of my devices are Plug and Play? What if my bios/motherboard doesn't support plug and play? What if I don't even know the make and model of my NIC and Motherboard and Chipset?

If you can get a CDROM attached to your computer, I'd VERY much recommend the Morphix distribution - and SPECIFICALLY MorphixLite. It is Debian based, with a really good auto-detect sequence (it's a live CD like Knoppix), but it runs IceWM, instead of the more processor-heavy GUI's like KDE or Gnome. Once you get MorphixLite ready to go, sit down and take notes as it autoconfigures your system... it will show you a LOT as it scrolls by.

Plus, Morphix has a very easy Install to Hard Disk script right on its desktop.

No matter what, READ READ READ. Linux is NOT intended for the braindead point-and-clickers. Linux is FREEDOM... and freedom doesn't mean anything if you don't know HOW to USE it.

GBYLBT, Pastor Ed
<God Bless Your Linux Box Today>

[hwb0014]

No doubt about it....they do however are lacking in the printing department with cups.....

Try to print to a usb printer using cups on a HP series deskjet printer....

It aint fun

[hwb0014]

That would be gentoo....I heard good things and bad about it....but do you really want to be installing something that could take 30 minutes to do in slackware? They both do the same thing in the end....but in the enterprise the knowledge gained through experience putting one of these distros together could come in handy

[nko]

Hi!

I'm looking for a rather specific system. I'd like a distro that includes the following:

- Linux Kernel
- BASH
- gcc (and g++) + all the other basic stuff to compile programs from sources
- links / lynx
- python

I really don't need much. I would very much prefer nothing more than these things. The best I've done so far is a very minimal installation of Mandrake 9.1. It takes about 30 seconds to load. I think that, for my purposes, the system should be able to load a little faster than that. I'd like to put such a distro on a 486 laptop. I think it'd be a really useful system for the desktop user who doesn't require X (like me!). Anyone know of anything?

[Brocket99]

http://www.blacksphere.ca/linux/floppy_linux.html

[Sepero]

30 seconds? I'd say that's pretty darn good for a 486. My laptop is a 450mhz P3, with a custom kernel & custom scripts and it takes almost 30 seconds to boot up. I'm jealous. :D

Maybe I should use modules instead of compiling everything I need into the kernel. Any suggestions? :)

[nko]

Whoa! I forgot to mention, I'm testing all this stuff on a P-II!!!

A Full minute would be a great load time for a 486 :).

I don't think I mentioned: space is constrained. As much leftover space as possible would be very nice.

[sarah31]

you could take a look at damnsmall linux or one of the floppy based ditros.

[calvin166]

has anyone heard about college linux? I've heard a few good things...

[sharth]

Originally posted by UlTiMaTeHH
okay my system is

asus tusl-2 mainboard
intel pentium 3 933 Mhz
Geforce 2 mx400
sblive! 1024
creative scrw4832
pioneer dvdrom
32 bits fast ethernet adapter

does operna work on this?
or isnt there anything that worx here
??? i think my pc is very old so . and i thought my system was old... Why hasn't this thread died anywho... poor little thread. getting beat into existance.

Personally, I say go with debian. Why? Because I can. :) It works fine for me. I've started to mesh testing and unstable, and as long as you understand how the system works, you shouldn't screw up anything. Problems occur in testing, but they get resolved a bit later than a week, and you can usually get the unstable version and wait for it to simply migrate down.

auto-apt is a great feature as well. no more source depends. :)

and a hum. on alc's post a while back on sharing the home directory. It's not the uid that matters. In the /etc/passwd file is a spot where you say where each home directory is for each user. That would be where you would make sure that they are the same for both users. But as long as you name each user joebob, then they should have the same home directory. (unless some distros sort home directories by uid, which would be odd)

uhmm.. yeah. enjoy :)

[RaGe2012]

I wouldn't know which distro to really recommend...I mean every one I've tried has had it's vices. The best I've tried thus far would have to be the latest version of Mandrake and the latest version of Slackware. Red Hat 9 is just plain horrible. Don't go near it.


---------------------------------------

Two wrongs don't make a right but three rights make a left! :D

[drewthetux]

Which Linux is best ???
the answer is that's the wrong question !!

[PhasterX]

I'm trying to move away from Red Hat 9. What distro should i use? SuSe, Vector, Slackware, etc. Opinions pls. This is going on a laptop.

[jetblackz]

Depends on the hardware and what you'll be doing on it.

[mim]

A cautionary tale. I've just moved from RH9 to Slack 9.0. When i first installed RH9, my soundcard (Via82cxxx_audio) would not work (no sound), my USB Speedtouch ADSL modem would work (no internet), and my graphics card (ATI Rad 9000) although detected correctly during install, had errors during bootup (AGP releated) and would not keep it's window positions between sessions (pain in the neck).

Had ALL this again when moving to Slack, only ADD -- keyboard refusing to budge from US default (want UK), and MS Intellimouse mouse wheel not working.

There are fixes for these things i know, and i'm currently trying to go through them all, but you'll have more problems getting Slack up and running than RH.

[Darkbolt]

thats because rh does everything for you, slack you actually have to do some work...and unless you really want to learn how, it wont be easy for you...if you like those kinda things then it can be a great experiance

[z0mbix]

I've decided, you will use Debian

[sharth]

Originally posted by z0mbix
I've decided, you will use Debian I've agreed.

[stevewabc]

Originally posted by UlTiMaTeHH
well then can u give me a few sites of versions like debian and what about lindows is that something worth??


Do as mdwatts tells you for he is the one and only LINUX GOD!!!!:D

Celdera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1.1 or Libranet2.8 but you will need a credit Card $55.00 To download

Run a Search

[PhasterX]

lol. anyone else? I also am looking for a lightweight one. RH has too many extras I don't really need.

[ookami01]

I am in the US ARMY right now and looking to advance my career when i get out and get into the IT feild.

I also would like to try out linux and just muck around with it.

my question is what do you think a good distro to learn in order to strengthen a resume. I would think that it wold be RedHat Linux. But how about you - FreeBSD is welcome too or any of the other BSDs

Don't think i have sold out i will probably use a different distro on my home computer but for the sake of jobs and what not what do you think.

thanks
out here.

[AlexPlank]

Red Hat rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dimitrylevin]

Originally posted by AlexPlank
Red Hat rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree completely.

[ZAmodeo]

Red Hat seems to be what a lot of people want and I've heard that sometimes they want people with knowledge about "Linux 8," (referring to RedHat 8) when what they really need is someone to tell them that the kernel is only in version 2 point something :confused: . I'm still in the learning stages and I've found that RedHat is really nice to learn your way around on and help you get comfortable with Linux. RedHat certification seems to be a pretty big thing too. While I'm at my rambling, thanks for being in the army!

[brast]

Mandrake was the first distro I could get up and running properly. Red hat wouldn't run smoothly...constant halting when I merely move the mouse. Regardless, I've had the most success with Mandrake 9.0, and just upgraded to 9.1. It has all the things I was looking for with it, from office suite (www.openoffice.org) to MP3 player(XMMS) and chat (gabber, gaim etc). Of course many other distros come with these same programs, so that's nothing specifically in favor of Mandrake.

The only two distros (that I know of) that have a graphical setup are Red Hat and Mandrake . Both are quite easy to go through. SO that's my personal take on it. I give it a matter of minutes before someone says I'm completely wrong and you should pick some other distro.

[Darkbolt]

dont let slackwares complexities deter you, you ARE on the right track....long as you stay with slack ;)

[jetblackz]

mim, someone told me rh9 worked with that sound card out of the box. I told him it would be either mdk 9.1 or Lycoris latest.

To get that sound card up and running, you must www.alsa-project.org. It WON'T be easy.

If you still need fixes for Slack, try my site

http://jetblackz.freeservers.com/

PhasterX, if you want "fully lightweight" - no icons, no shortcuts - there are blackbox, fluxbox and then some. If you want lightweight with icons or buttons, Window Maker or IceWM(Windows-ish).

As for distros, any of those one-CD Linux is fine. Just fine-tune it to your liking. Take a look at my site.

[SolKarma]

If you never worked at the administration level of a multi-user enviroment (TOPS-20, VMS, UNIX) that requires 'layered intallations of software' (programs that depend upon other programs scattered all over the directory structure, which you have very limited control), then Linux could represent a challenge for you.

The best learning tool is Knoppix (http://knopper.net/knoppix) . Knoppix loads into RAM the Linux kernel from a ISO 9660 disk, CD-ROM.

Why Knoppix?

1. Knoppix is 100% free.
2. Nothing to permanently install upon your hard drive (although you can save your system configuration information there as well as work you create, e.g., documents, email)
3. complete detection of hardware perhiperhals and their configuration via the correct device driver loading
4. When done, just power off your PC. Everything is in RAM. There's nothing to 'break'

[LexLuthor666]

There is no right answer to which Linux is best. Try them all out and see which one you take a liking to. You might like how easily one version installs compared to another, or you might like the GUI better. I've tried a lot of them and have stuck with Redhat because it seems to recognize my hardware the best and have the most support. SuSE is another one that setup very easily and had no trouble recognizing my hardware. I've tried Caldera and Mandrake as well and liked Mandrake more between the two. The best place to go for ISO downloads of Linux is www.linuxiso.org. Hope that helps.

[arkaine23]

Redhat is probably what you'll see the most of out there as far as linux use. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and even Solaris can also be useful to know. I was recently an admin for a company and that's what they ran (all 4 of those), and the secretary used windows 2000. I was hired and my first task was to upgrade all the Redhat machines to Gentoo.

[ookami01]

I apreciate all of the input.

I am not really looking for a distro to start using just the distro that the majority of the companies out there will be using.

i have experience with Satellite Communications and running internet off of that for local users. That is my job actually. And have been using linux for a little while.

I would like to have experience with something that might be able to get me a job later on, while still learning some new things and having fun. Like learning linux but i don't want to know - joe's linux where the files are in different spots or the drives are mounted in different spots and get used to that and not be able to do something on the job.

or maybe what are the distros that the majority of companies are using.

----

why did your company switch to gentoo.

thank you!

[PhasterX]

yeah thanx jet. Your site rocks. I just installed Slack and it runs really fast. I'm having problems in another post (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=101717) , but I like it. Alot more responsive then RH. Install was simple too. Thanx.

[deanrantala]

Originally posted by UlTiMaTeHH
ok i desided to throw away my windows cds and step completely over at linux unix based system im a 15 yr old boy and im wondering WICH version of linux is best 4 me and where i can download it because this is my first time and there are so many different linuxes i asked here please give me a tip

wouldn't bother with lindows - doesn't seem to work anywhere as nice as some of the more "comercial" distros. I started off with red hat, but soon learned that it is rather crippled as far as multimedia is concerned(you'll have to download many, many plugins and libraries for video playback, dvd,etc...even mp3!), not to mention red hats costomer service is awfull(in my opinion). A small simple easy distro is lycoris , it is nearly as easy as windows in many respects but always seems to run a little slugish. One of my favorites is mandrake. opt for 9.1, it is one of the easiest to setup and configure, includes "wizards" for many setup routines as does windows and includes lots of eye candy:)

I have been using linux for about 5 months now and am currently using mandrake 9.i while learning slackware. You can do just as much with linux as would with windows if not more.

as for a site for getting the isos:
http://www.linuxiso.org/

since you have a dvd drive you WILL need to download a copy of the css descrambling utility, you need this file: libdvd-css-0.0.3-1
DO NOT use any other versions, they dont work!!

And one last point of concern, you have a creative sound blaster live! ? Be advised that it IS supported under linux and is set up and automaticaly configured under most distros, however, you will not be able to take use of the sound cards more advanced features like the surround eax enhancements and the such, none the less your card will work - but want to put you up on everything before you are dissapointed .(I own three soundblaster live! cards, including a 5.1 series)

enjoy!

_____________________________

linux - where do you want to go TOMORROW?

[sclebo05]

Here are my votes. Mandrake, Redhat, JAMD, Libranet. The first two because they are simple to learn, they find every piece of hardware i throw at them, and support for them is everywhere(like this forum for example). JAMD is on my list because it is RH8 on 1 disc, recompiled for speed, with a software manager that easily installs packages and resolves dependencies. Finally Libranet, because that is what i am using right now, it is a small simple debian based distro that is small, fast, stable and has the software packaging tools that save me time/headaches. i recommand all 4 in descending order for newbies.

[tanna]

For best linux, I think overall Yoper fairs good. IT's kinda like Mandrake in many ways but Mandrake and I had problems. We broke up.:p

[Yin]

I've used linux about five months using: redhat 8, redhat 9, vector linux 3.2 and Mandrake 9.1.

I am currently triple booting win xp, RH-9 and VL-3.2.

The other day I installed Mandrake 9.1 on a partition on hda and it changed the drive letters in XP and caused a lot of the software on xp to not run.:(
Mndrk 9.1 also didn't set up my internet correctly. It also forced RH-9 to re-configure some of the hardware. So I formatted that partition and had to do a fresh install of xp...norton ghost couldn't even repair it because of the drive letter changes.

So, with my limited experience with linux, here is my favorites in this order: 1) RH-9 ; 2) Vector linux 3.2, it's very fast! I have said enough about Mandrake 9.1 already.

BTW: What do you think caused Mandrake to f*ck the other systems up?

Peace, Frank
:)

[sclebo05]

did you use the mandrake partition tool or a third party application like partition magic to cut up your mandrake partitions?

[SolKarma]

Originally posted by ookami01
I apreciate all of the input.

I would like to have experience with something that might be able to get me a job later on, while still learning some new things and having fun.

Well, that is a different issue entirely. If you want to become "smarter", i.e., be able to see a bigger picture, which is how one is able to earn more money always, then perhaps you might want to study 'Complex Adaptive Systems'.

Why?

You could combine your knowledge of CAS and Linux into something meaningful, e.g., computing in bioinformatics, which is where the action is, or computing for gaming.

[Yin]

I had about 14 gig of unallocated space on hda so I just let Mandrake partition it.

I have P. Magic 8.01. Would it have not caused as many problem's using PM 8.01?

If not I'd like to install mndrk again.

Thanks, Frank :)

[spiderbaby1958]

So let me tell you about the Linux that's best for me, a beginner who is passionately interested in the possibilities of free software-- but not a technical person by nature.

In my heart I know I will never buy another Windows computer, but I still do most of my computing on Windows. A few months ago I tried to barnstorm Linux and learn it intuitively the same way I had learned Windows, and that just didn't work. After a scary failure at a dual boot of Red Hat with Win98 (my hard drive failed, temporarily) I decided to take an old Gateway machine that I'd purchased at a garage sale for 40 dollars, and make that my Linux laboratory. This has advantages besides safety. It's nice to be able to read the online documentation off one screen while working off another. Best of all, I could communicate with more experienced Linux users on IRC (@ Freenode) while I was installing Linux! That was a real comfort, and probably saved me hours of frustration.

I tried a few distros, but I settled on Debian. If I'm going to allow myself to remain dependent on Windows for a while, that will allow me the time and space to really learn this stuff from the bottom up, and I wanted to chose a distro that will force me to look at the real Linux-Unix guts of the beast, and not fool around with the GUI. Besides, such a distro ought to run better on my older machine, which only has 40 MB RAM. (Mandrake ran horribly, maddeningly, tragically slow!)

I chose Debian over Slackware because of the wide range of available applications, and the affiliation with the Free Software Foundation. Actually, I had originally chose Slack-- but some guy whom I encountered in a chatroom somewhere talked me into Debian-- and thus, perhaps, changed my life. I can't even remember what he told me that
convinced me.

I downloaded the first disk (With a dialup connection! It can be done!) and I only installed it the day before yesterday. So far, all I've been able to do with it are pick up a few elementary line commands using BASH-- but that's exactly what I need to be learning right now. Vive le penguin! :)

[VolcomPimp]

well Im new here and Im not gonna try and argue which linux is best or anything... can tell ya my experiences so far....
Ive been using rh9 for sometime now... like the install, seems to run ok besides my problems tryin 2 install wine.... gentoo kinda pissed me off cause the install took a long time and I couldnt get it workin correctly the time I actually got it to install everything and give me a text prompt (after the initial install)...
I'd like 2 try slackware but I havnt found a fast enough mirror...

I come from a windows background like most other people and Ive used Win2k for a few years now... Im lookin for a linux distro
that's not gonna be too hard 2 install and to maintain, but at the same time I dont wanna sacrifice functionability and speed...
basicly I wanna get WineX workin and everything setup to my needs as far as my desktop environment (still configuring fluxbox w/ wmDrawer in slit).... given that information, what do you guys think would be the best distro for me???

[mr orion77]

united linux. ( i hope its gonna end up like this) a universal linux that sets the benchmark for the real world.

apt like package system
slackware cleanliness and stability
up to date software ie no kde 2.2.2 like debian woody
no silly distro specific quirks like red hat
a clear and concise manual
configuration instructions for text and a gui
plus the gui should only need to set the basic stuff

and a nice logo like gentoo lol

;) :p

[dlausevic]

Redhat, ALL THE WAY!!

[jetblackz]

Thanks, man. I'll be updating it soon.

RH, MDK, SuSE, Lycoris and Lindows are good for first timers and maybe intermediate users.

[sarah31]

a via82cxxx should work out of the box on any system with a 2.4 kernel. you don't need alsa. my mainbox #2 runs on the OSS version of that driver without issue and sounds super. alsa is also not that big an issue to get installed i have done it before and that was well before this point in time where i consider myself to vastly improved in compiling and linux in general.

[ZAmodeo]

Originally posted by SolKarma

Why Knoppix?
2. Nothing to permanently install upon your hard drive (although you can save your system configuration information there as well as work you create, e.g., documents, email)

You can install Knoppix on your hard drive if you want to, and if you do Morphix is a lot like Knoppix but it has a graphical installer -- or so says www.distrowatch.com

[genuine143]

Well, Although I hate RH9 but I'd have to say RedHat !! although if u mention in your resume that you have knowlege in Linux in general it would be enough so it doesnt really matter what distro your using because they are to a certain point the same (RH and MDK) I mean !! and a RH certificate will bring the :eek: on the faces of some of the IT companies !! :D

Cheerz

[Anorexorcist]

slackware is a powerful distro..probably one of my favs. but redhat aint bad either, but it spans 3 iso's.....not exactly compact. but redhat is still a nice operating system. ideal if ya wanna dual boot it with windows. both are probably what your looking for so you're going to have to make the call.

[VolcomPimp]

well over the weekend I found a fast mirror for the slack 9 iso
and Im glad I made the choice to switch over...
so first of all 1 point for slackware for having a 1 cd install....

For a while I was a little frightened of slackware thinkin it'd be like gentoo where the install consists of typing various
commands at the prompt, but it was actually quite painless
since I had partitions set up from red-hat already...
another point for not making me sit and type crap for hours
at a time....

Once I got into the install I noticed it was a little more detailed than the other installs I've used in the sense that it allowed me
to mount my windows partitions from inside it (+1 point)...
once I was finished w/ everything and booted the comp
I realized that a lot of things weren't already setup for me like
a session manager (gdm comes w/ redhat already installed)....
for me that's kinda a good thing but I guess some newbies would
find that a little frusterating....

Only 2 real complaints so far... my cdrom wont mount for some reason, in fstab it uses the line /dev/cdrom to /mnt/cdrom and it didnt work even after I changed it to /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom.... when I tried 'mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom' it gave me an error saying I needed to specify a filesystem so I added -t iso9660 and it gave me some error sayin it's the wrong filesystem so I dono...
minus 1 point...
also the lilo config utility is a little buggy... entries get added all over the place and even when I try and edit the text file from w/in the utility it acts a little wierd... I guess for now Im stuck w/ a Win2k entry, a hda1 entry (which both boot to windows... it keeps adding the hda1 in there) and my linux entry.... I think Ima just delete the util and d/l a sample lilo.conf and do it myself....

oh ya, it seems to actually compile and run winex (I dono how good though yet... Counter-strike crashed on me) so theres another point...

Slackware's the distro for me although I guess I still recomend Red Hat 9 to ppl who wanna start learning linux but dont really know that much yet as a temporary distro (unless they fall in love w/ it)...

[hwb0014]

In the words of Morpheus

"Welcome to the real world"




Learn by doing....there are a lot of slack users who ran into the same problems at first...but learned by doing!

[MB[DK]]

Originally posted by dlausevic
Redhat, ALL THE WAY!!

My god, you obviously stole my signature design. I'm shocked.

[Darksamurai]

I used to say Red Hat... Now I'm all 'bout Gentoo. I like the "emerge sync" option... it's pretty dang cool.

I'm about to load up Mandrake and check that out though... Did the Red Hat 7.2 thing (not well), and the Red Hat 9.0 thing (learnin'!), then I'm still working on the Gentoo thing...

Now it's time to try Mandrake... then after I get comfortable with all of these, I'll probably move to Debian. This stuff is addictive...

[goon12]

I have tried a bunch of disto's, and I settled on RedHat7.3. I like to learn, but I also like to have smooth install, and an OS that does what I want. Yeah rpm's can cause head aches, but I still have the option of installing from source. Picking which distro is best for you is up to you. We can't tell you what you favorite ice cream is, you have to find out for yourself. Wether it be chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla.. they are still ice cream, so Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, etc etc... they are Linux. I'd say sample a few distro's and stick with the one you like and feel most comfortable with. Your not locked into one, and don't limit your options based on our opinions.

-goon12

[sclebo05]

VolcomPimp, thre reason you are having issues with wine is because of Red Hat's new threading technology. check the wine support section, there are people working on it as we speak. i tried to install wine about 10 times then found out it wasn't doable. darn.

[VolcomPimp]

ya I read a lot about that... I finally decided to switch to slack...
I like slack a lot better but I need to reinstall it again...
had a little trouble w/ installing video drivers but I think
I know what to do now... I tried installing winex and it
didnt work the first time but then I remembered there
was an install script so I tried that and I guess it installed
fine... still hadnt upgraded to the new glibc's for slack that
were released cause every time I try and d/l it stalls and
it d/l's real slow on their server... but winex actually
worked this time so Im happy w/ slack...
I tried running counter-strike but the menu's were actin a little
wierd and it crashed on me and I didnt know how 2 exit the program cause it was full screen...

I think all my issues will be cleared up the next time I install
if I get all the updates I need and figure out how 2 get
nvidia's drivers workin through the run script (or else Ill
have 2 use the glx and kernel install)....

[soccergoli]

I'm a 1 year newbie to Linux. I've installed RH8.1 and 9.0 plus Suse 8.1, Mandrake 8.0 and tried to install Gentoo to no avail. (I really want to get into Gentoo, but it's a little over the top for me). I'm currently running Mandrake 9.1 and have very few problems. My only issue is getting the IEEE module loaded so I can do all of my video editing. But it did recognize all of my hardware right off the bat! But like the other guys said, do some research...each one has something you'll like and hate!

[drunkpenguin]

It took me quite a while, but I fianlly became sick of the bugs, slow downs and security holes in Wind0w$ XP. I have finally found my place in linux after trying several distributions, this is what I recomend to fellow newbies.

1) RED HAT
Red Hat has made it easy to install by far. It recognizes most hardware and is reliable. The Red Hat Network system for system updates by far makes it very easy to keep up2date witht he various security fixes and preformance enhancements.

2) SuSE
I found it hard to install after using redhat for a while, but it works great with my hardware. I bought a copy of the professional distro at a local store for $88(USD) and it came with the user manual, administration manual, 5 CDs (??3 Binary, 2 Source??), and 2 DVDs (1 Binary, 1 Source)

3) Gentoo
This distro is source based and has a BSD ports system. You download a small basic linux system, configure some options, then it will download source for all programs and compile it on your hardware. Theory is that having the programs compile on your hardware will result in a more robust and high-performing system. Problem is unlike Red Hat and SuSE which install and are up and running in an hour or less, gentoo can take up to two days to install and get to a working system. Gentoo needs to download the source over your internet connection and then needs to compile. This took at least a day on my 1 GHz Athlon, with 512 MB RAM and a T1 network connection.

I hope this helps someone out there, and always remember Linux is Free as in Freedom not beer although many companies give it away like free beer.

[stormbringr00]

I have tried Mandrake and Redhat but right now I am playing with Knoppix. I like it because I don't even have to load it to use it. I have however, since installed it to my hard drive. I like it because it boots and runs from the CD Drive. Another neat feature is that you can still see all of your Windows files. Also, it already has a working installation of Open Office and Samba ready to go.

[sclebo05]

I have an older version of knoppix, and i like it. i have used it twice to fix hard drives i thought i was going to have to reformat. i also have taken it places that i knew didn't have linux so i could boot into something i like :)

anyway, my question is: how do you get knoppix on the hard drive? i know there is a command or something

also, does it have any graphical tools for retrieving and updating packages? i am running Libranet right now and i like the gnome-apt for installing software, couldn't be easier.

[Zoist]

I am after a distro which is small, possibly less than 200 mb which includes sendmail, firewall (ipchains) and also has masq support. Any suggestions would be great thanks.

[mart_man00]

google.com, it will show a zillion floppy or micro distros.

if you want a small distro that will be fast try gentoo. you compile everything(or you can cheat with there packages) and it doesnt install every linux app known to mankind like alot of distros. plus portage kicks rpm's a$$

[stumbles]

Originally posted by Zoist
I am after a distro which is small, possibly less than 200 mb which includes sendmail, firewall (ipchains) and also has masq support. Any suggestions would be great thanks.

Here is a couple of starters:

http://leaf-project.org/

http://leaf-project.org/devel/cstein/index.html

[Zoist]

Thanks peoples I just wanted a good distro for using as a router/server without all the crap I don't need. Any pointers on favorite Linux from scratch sites?

[Icarus]

I like SmoothWall (http://smoothwall.org/) for a firewall/router. I have it running on a p100 w/56mb or RAM (old EDO) and it works great

[dysharmonic]

I cant seem to get Doom II to play on a winme system! Not mine anyway :D

Hey, nice info on knoppix. Have heard a few tales abt it, but never given it a try yet. Sounds great!

[sclebo05]

Oh Doom II will play on ME, get the Win95 version. or go to http://legacy.newdoom.com for the latest Open source (and slightly revamped) doom II. an old game that just won't die......

[dysharmonic]

Hey, cool thanx for the link, sclebo05, appreciate that :)

Waiting for Doom III, but w/ a GeForce2 (!) do you think my system can handle it?

[Abdulla]

What about Root linux?
http://www.rootlinux.org/

im not using it yet, but i will :)

[MisterGuru]

Hi, got no response in Tech, thought I'd try here, since I need basic info to get "up and running."

I need to make a print server using LPR/LPD, no graphics, no KB, no monitor. Canon S9000 and i950 graphics printers will be hooked to it via USB 2.0 ports.

The clients printing to it are printing from Photoshop (Windows XP).

The box is AMD 700, 512mb ram.

I am doing this now with XP as a print server - but it slows using 2 printers, crawls using 3+. I need it to service 5 and was told "Linux will do it better!"

Push me in the direction for the right distro to use first! Thanks.

[stumbles]

What's wrong with say a minimalist install of ML9.1 and CUPS? Then if needed you could manage the printers via web browser.

[MisterGuru]

That's just the advice I am looking for :-)

I have Mandrake 9 downloaded. ISO's that is.

You think I can make a super-small install of it on a 1.6 Gig HD? (I happen to have 4 or 5 of those )

If I am not asking too much: what would be necessary to install and keep it as small as possible?

I know I need PICO - I am dead in the water with vi :-)

[Zoist]

That looks nice mahdi. Thanks!

[stumbles]

Originally posted by MisterGuru
That's just the advice I am looking for :-)

I have Mandrake 9 downloaded. ISO's that is.

You think I can make a super-small install of it on a 1.6 Gig HD? (I happen to have 4 or 5 of those )

If I am not asking too much: what would be necessary to install and keep it as small as possible?

I know I need PICO - I am dead in the water with vi :-)

Easily. During the install process you end up at the point where packages can be selected. Uncheck them all and check the "select indiviual packages".

In there you can select exactly what you want installed without any of the "fluff".

Once at that screen you should be able to figure out what is needed to fit your goal.

Obviously you will want to choose CUPS along with the foomatic packages. There are some other printer/print related ones you might want.

[MisterGuru]

Great. I will start on this today and not post here any more, wasting your time, unless I get a problem.

Thanks for that little "push," and please keep your eyes open for a new post - somehow I know I will get stuck!

BTW - have you used lpr type printer sharing, and do you think it will outperform Windows XP as a printserver?

Thanks!
--Tim

[mchangun]

You might wanna give mdk 9.1 a try. It runs much better for me but i'm using it as a desktop, so our requirements may vary.

Btw, u mite wanna get X installed and use s'th simple like IceWm. It makes the configuration easier bcuz of mdk's GUI config tools. Once you're done with the config, you can jus kill the X server and start it up wenevr u need to chg s'th.

[pnuts]

What distro is the most popular on this site and why? It might help when recommening one to people.

[Hayl]

this sums up my reasons:

http://www.ibiblio.org/web-gentoo/images/poster.jpg

[MisterGuru]

Hi, he said to get ML 9.1 and you said Mdk.

ML= Mandrake Linux?
Mdk=Mandrake?

Just making sure I understand you both!

Thanks.

[Syntaxis]

I favour Debian because of its policy manual and strong emphasis on integration. WRT policy, this slashdot post that I came across sums it up pretty well:

[lost the #comment number and subject for this one, sorry]
---
Debian is both the most complete _and_ the most integrated distribution of all. No other distribution, actually, no other operating system period has something like the Debian Policy Manual (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/) that encompasses _every single component_ of the system. Not just the base system, but also all the packages supplied by the distribution. If something doesn't conform, it's a bug and should be reported as such. Most of the non-essential packages for other major distributions like RH and SuSE aren't even packaged in-house, they're contributed from the outside. That's why you sometimes end up in 'RPM dependency hell', and not because there is something inherently wrong with the RPM package format as some people seem to think.
---

Here's another goodie:

---
Re:Outdated versions!!! Re: Debian Released Notes (Score:5, Informative)
by Buck2 on Saturday July 20, @02:35AM (#3921432)

I once asked a question in #Debian.

I asked, "Why do bugs in packages which are obviously due to the program itself [menu options crashing the program, false advertising within the documentation, totally broken config parsing, etc], get reported to the Debian package maintainers? Don't package maintainers just package stuff up and put it in the tree?"

The response was, "A bug in a Debian package is a bug in the distribution."
---

Yep, that's what I love about Debian. :)

[markanini]

After looking at http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major ive decided to look at Mandrake and Lycoris. What do you think about these distos? Think they might suit my needs(stated above)?

[Hayl]

honestly, any linux distro is going to give you what you want. they all have the same base software available (web browsers, audio software, etc). whether or not the distro has prepackaged binaries of everything you may or may not need is irrelavant. if you require an app that none of the distros provide as a binary, you can always compile it from source code.

if you are going to go with a rpm based distro and you want to use their kernels because you aren't into rolling your own, then i'd take a close look at what kernel versions and extra patch sets they are providing. Mandrake is probably fine for what you need. Not sure what patch sets they include in their kernels but it must be better than a Red Hat Kernel (sorry RH users).

[zdude255]

I think Mandrake has more that you need out-of-the-box.

It comes with ntfs support already in the kernel.

Galeon is a great web browser, its based on the mozilla engine, but with a GTK+ interface.

Mandrake has a multimedia package group so it is easy to install sound tools.

Overall more people know about Mandrake then Lycoris so you'll likely get more familier support.

Check out 9.1 and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

[mchangun]

lol, i meant Mandrake, yes. I'm not sure about him, but i would suspect so.

[hlrguy]

As mentioned, any recent distro will work. The question should have been, 'Recommendations needed on music/recording programs'.

I have used Audacity. It supports up to 4 channel stereo, although, have never tried that since I only have a 2 channel sound card. :) It records, adds effects, and this is the one that I use to record off the radio. You grab a sound byte of 'noise' and filter the recording through it and it cleans it up nice. I have also used soundstudio, rezound and all work great. (and have some nice affects of their own)

If you follow my sig on Linux Equivalents, under music editing, it lists (and a whole host of anything else you might like)

1) Rezound.
2) Sweep.
3) WaveForge.
4) Sox.
5) Audacity.
6) GNUSound.
7) Ecasound.
8) SoundStudio.

For hardware, simply enter, into google, linux <hardwareelementname>

hlrguy

[sclebo05]

hopefully Doom III isn't too advanced, because i hope to play it on my G3. I don't want to upgrade my video card (again) to play one game. seems like only yesterday i got this one...

[ImNorseGod]

Have you tried Trustix Secure Linux? It is very small and a breeze to install. Ive done the a print server similar to your needs with no problem.

[stumbles]

Originally posted by MisterGuru
Hi, he said to get ML 9.1 and you said Mdk.

ML= Mandrake Linux?
Mdk=Mandrake?

Just making sure I understand you both!

Thanks.

Yes Mandrake Linux and both questions. It does not have to be that distro. Any will suffice.

I'm just more familiar with the install of ML9.1 than any of the others.

[heckle]

Are you not wanting to have a keyboard on it? If so, install and configure VNC so you can control it remotely.

[MisterGuru]

VNC, ok... lemme look that up too. I am using PC Anywhere while it is running XP.

Since I am Linux illiterate, I will probably make a dual boot so I can always fall back to my XP printserver.

hmm... OK, just found a page on VNC install :-)

[stumbles]

Originally posted by MisterGuru
Great. I will start on this today and not post here any more, wasting your time, unless I get a problem.

Thanks for that little "push," and please keep your eyes open for a new post - somehow I know I will get stuck!

BTW - have you used lpr type printer sharing, and do you think it will outperform Windows XP as a printserver?

Thanks!
--Tim

1. Have fun.

2. I will.

3. I would suspect so because Linux in general allows you more granular control of what services you want to run.

4. I have not used lpr for a very long time so don't know how it performs against CUPS.

Side note: If you are wanting to share the printers in a windows enviroment you will need Samba.

[stumbles]

Originally posted by heckle
Are you not wanting to have a keyboard on it? If so, install and configure VNC so you can control it remotely.

Not really needed as CUPS can be managed via a browser remotely.

The mobo bios should allow keyboard reporting to be turned off. It also should allow if not all most error reporting so it can be run headless as well without a keyboard.

[serz]

I'm currently using Redhat but I'm going to try Gentoo as soon as I get a new hd.

[MisterGuru]

I am installing Mandrake now. I did not catch the option to pick each component, but I chose "Network Server," "Other Graphical Destops" (KDE was too big for my little HD).

It's going on now.

Please check back. I am sure I will have a Q in a few minutes.

I always search first, but Linux is foreign to me.

This is a photo vending kiosk I put together. Right now, my Apache and PHP run on Windows XP serving it all up. But there is a bug in Apache or PHP for Windows that hangs the browser when I do:

exec ('start copy g:*.jpg c:\\htdoc\\newevent\\');

It works and does the background copy, but if it is 100's of pics, it takes 7-10 minutes and the browser hangs indefinitely. I have tried SO MANY solutions.

Linux may be the answer. Not that XP doesn't do it correctly from the command line, it does... something in Apache or PHP is waiting indefinitely though, and noone seems to have the answer. It is not sessions and "exec ('cmd.exe /c start copy..." doesn't fix it.... I dunno.

So, I may end up doing a Linus install on my server too... wish me luck!

[Icarus]

np, it is a great package...I also have it setup for DNS cacheing, DHCP server and Proxy...works very good for me, even with all the features and logging turned on

[jedthehumanoid]

yes, smoothwall is great. it's easy, small and you can configure it from a web browser anywhere on the network. not to mention the iso is only about 20 megs, so you can download, burn and install it in less than an hour.

[Icarus]

oh, BTW. I'm using the beta which uses the 2.4.19 kernel

http://smoothwall.org/beta/

for those that need iptables ;)

[karthik]

you can also checkout ipcop (http://ipcop.org)

[Engineer]

I have attempted to use IPCop and SmoothWall both (very similar) and I could get neither to work with my broadband router/LAN :( . . . anyone possibly have any pointers? Now I am reinterested again, I will mess with it again tomorrow after work. Any advice from previous users would be greatly appreciated

Dj

[PleaseNoFlames]

.

[Hayl]

there are already a ton of these posts on here already for distro recommendataions. here are links to some.

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59636&highlight=recommend+distro

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=102023&highlight=recommend+distro

[Tjoh311]

Newbie + Hacker-- HMMMMM!!! interesting;)

I suggest you search the forums on the ol' which linux is best debate. It should help you in your persuit. Also check out www.linuxiso.org, they have a pretty good rundown of distros that are out there

HTH

[Gertrude]

Maybe give Lindows a try.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by Gertrude
Maybe give Lindows a try.

HAH! That's mean!

Don't you see the guy's name is "PleaseNoFlames"??? :D

[sharth]

slack or debian or gentoo or lfs

[PleaseNoFlames]

So you're saying that every hacker was always a hacker and never a newbie????? If you want to trash me, go ahead, but you'll just be showcasing your ignorance. I respect hackers and I plan to learn about port surfing, etc. not just download 40 programs and use them to let me get into someone's computer. By the way, thank you for your priceless advice.

[mchangun]

lol gertrude, i'll hav 2 report your post to a moderator.

[PleaseNoFlames]

Well everyone's gotta start somewhere bud.

[slapNUT]

No, I would not say that, but seeing the 2 words together (Newbie and Hacker) always makes me laugh. kind of like Doctors who Practice, they just sound funny together. Newbie Hacker??? Isn't that one of them oxymorons?

[trc]

i suggest learning a programming language (python or C is a good start) if you want to 'become a hacker'

[PleaseNoFlames]

I'm learning C++, but the point of my post was "what is the best distro for a newbie hacker", not "can you tell me how to become a hacker because I think hackers are neato". And how is newbie hacker an oxymoron? EVERYONE HAS TO START SOMEWHERE. Some of you guys are the biggest hypocrites. You guys had to start somewhere to become hackers/"linux pros" and you probably asked a lot of question, but now that you are "pros" you act like asking a question is the biggest sin in the world. I hate windows, I wish Microsoft would go bankrupt. But for some reason, since I am switching from windows to linux, I am drawing flames????? Don't bother responding if you're going to give some smart @$$ response, I posted the question to get help from people who know what they are talking about, not from some person that has just passed the "newbie" stage and now think they are pros.

[jsundquist]

The reason they are poking fun at you is because a newbie and a hacker are two opposite ends of the computer spectrim. You are either a newbie or you are a hacker. You cant really be a newbie hacker. You could call yourself a hacker in training. But I think thats the closest you could get to calling your self a "newbie hacker". I suggest you start saying you are new to hacking and are looking for a distro to help yourself get more knownlege in the ways of hacking. People are just poking fun at the way you were saying it thats all.

This is a great forum. Dont let your first impressions of it make you want to leave. These are great people on this forum. They will help you solve almost any problem you come in contact with. Just remember to search before you post. Most questions have been asked a number of times.

[ven0m]

So you wanna become another script kiddie (as if we don't have enough to worry about).
If your a wannabe hacker why don't you try FreeBSD
www.freebsd.org (http://www.freebsd.org)
another good site
www.insecure.org (http://www.insecure.org)

Then take a look at the Hacking exposed books;)

[xxispawn01xx]

noflames i have the same situation as you i say redhat or even better mandrake, hacking in linux is strong because all you have is powerful network commands really easy if you think about it, theoretically that is :)

[xxispawn01xx]

any good hacking guides for newbies that you guys have links to (something thats recent i find like 80's and 98 guides, 2000 at most, never newer, just exploits; i am looking for tutorials)
Also why do so many people reccomend BSD for hacking?