Best flavour..

Winters

Ok, here goes. I use Microsoft windows on both my PCs.

But i do plan to change. I am going to build a nice cube pc [yes i do plan to build the case] over christmas and am toying with the idea of putting Linux/Unix onto it. The PC itself will really run as a server [dedicated BF1942/DC Linux server and also fileserver (all my mp3's and files)]. I am not a big user of Linux, used Redhat the odd time at collahe and stuff so im not too sure about all the differant versions.

What version of Linux really is the best for my cube pc. I may also use it as a PC when I need to so i want to be able to run programs on it too. Also it will be linked through network to my XP Pro box and Windows 2000 pro box so i do want to be able to access it from Windows no problem [which i know should be no problem].

Typedef

If you're a newbie.

Use something like Morphix or Knoppix.

Red Hat, is going to discontinue free support soonish for Red Hat and only sell it's corporate stuff.

So, I'm reckoning Red Head Loonix would not be appropiate for your uses "going forward".

*ahem*.

Maybe try out Mandrake

*shrug*

OfflerCrocGod

If you have the bandwidth get the latest Knoopix release just to try out a CD bootable Distro; this will help you see what's available, bewarned the speed it runs at is not normal since it runs from CD. As Typedef said Mandrake is good for newbies, there will be *I think* an updated 9.2 iso released later on this month (16th - 20th) because of the huge number of updates released right after 9.2 was minted.

Trojan

In my entirely unbiased opinion, Solaris is obviously the best OS for any kind of server, client, mobile phone, console or toaster you care to run it on.

ok, seriously, you can get the latest Solaris for free, sparc or intel, from:

http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/sol_index.html

Al.

zAbbo

Installed Mandrake 9.2 on my shuttle there,
easy to install, takes a wee while to work out some stuff, has an auto updater built in for software(urpmi).

Runs games well, have quake3 working here, so q3 based games wud be easy to get going(moh, rtcw, wolf et, etc.)
Theres also a bf1942 version.

Anways, its very easy to use and install

nadir

ok, seeing as nobody said it

gentoo

Right now, everybody says gentoo is like Way too hard to install for a nubie, but i dont think this is the case, the online documentation is awesome, very thorough, and you can get great help on irc.freenode.net
#gentoo
The thing about gentoo is it takes quite a while to install because it compiles nearly everything from source, but when you are finished you are left with a completely configured and optimised box. The portage system means to that you can install vast ammounts of software and keep your entire system up to date with virtually no difficulty, the only drawback is that you really need Broadband.
If you know even a little about unix and command line, i reccomend it.

Matt Simis

Once you get over the archaic installer, Debian (SID) is really nice. Once youve used apt-get (on other distis, but originally for Debian), you cant go back!

Make-kpkg is nice too.


Matt

Capt'n Midnight

Don't forget Knoppix is Debian based and if your PC can boot into a dos prompt and you have 800MB free (not on an NTFS partition) you can copy the CD (700MB) across, setup a batch file to call LOADLIN.EXE, setup a SWAP file and Home (say 100MB - more if you can) as two files in C:\

Will post more details soon.

Stark

Have been using Mandrake for quite some time, although I don't like 9.2 as much as 9.1

Used to hate Redhat but found Redhat 9 nice enough, the free Redhat is now Fedora Linux (http://fedora.redhat.com) so that could be worth trying out.

Heard good things about Gentoo although it's supposed to be tricky to install.

Don't really like Debian, everything's so old...

If you don't want to go to the hassle of installing, KNOPPIX or GNOPPIX (the gnome version) is worth trying out. Mandrake have something like that coming out now called MandrakeMove which offers the same thing, bootable linux on a CD.

Matt Simis

Originally posted by k.oriordan


Don't really like Debian, everything's so old...

Debian SID comes with Gnome 2.4 and KDE3.1... I thought that was pretty nice and upto date. It even supplies a 2.6 Kernel Test.



Matt

Typedef

Debian/Slackware/Gentoo and friends are not noobie friendly.

For cherry loosing on this front go with Mandrake... (the French are sluts afterall).

mneylon

Originally posted by Typedef

Red Hat, is going to discontinue free support soonish for Red Hat and only sell it's corporate stuff.

But there is Fedora....

JHMEG

If you plan on downloading a distro yourself, and are interested in the server side of things (ie not running a gui), then I'd suggest Trustix. It's redhat based, but without all the bloat, so the ISO image is only about 310Mb. If you've used redhat 7 much at all, you should have no problem using it. It also comes with its own updater, swup.

If not going down this route, debian is probably (IMHO) the next best.

Winters

Well I started downloading KNOPPIX and am 49% trough. Damn 700mb ISO's across 56k, still another 20 hours to go

Capt'n Midnight

Have a look at
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=130589
and http://www.linux.ie/community/cdburners.php
Winters are you West Dublin Based ?

Winters

Not west Dublin, North East Dublin. DCU though a good bit of the time

Didnt know there was a site for linux irish community. I'll Check it out now.

theciscokid

go to dcu use their wi-fi and get lightning downloads, theres quite a few spots there

Typedef

Originally posted by blacknight
But there is Fedora....

True.

The 'but' here is that upper management insisted on 'corporate' Linux (Red Hat/SuSE), because of some admitadely ludicrous/unnecessary notion that 'support' (meagre as it is on Red Hat Linux (x)'s basic package), was the end all and be all.

Since Fedora doesn't come with any kind of support package (because Red Hat want to you to pay big $ for that now), one might as well use Debian/Gentoo and friends.

Reason being, Debian/Gentoo and friends are non-commercial (like Fedora), but, aren't subject to the whims of a corporation (unlike Fedora).

Red Hat themselves have stated that Fedora will be a 'testing' ground for it's corporate software.

Around about here is where I stop being willing to deploy Red Hat systems.

When it gets right down to it, I'm probably going to turn my 'freeware' distro coat and start putting Debian out there as the way forward.

In fact dagda (www.linux.ie)'s webserver, runs on.... you've guessed it, Debian, as to Heanet, to my knowledge.

Do I really feel like paying mad money to Red Hat, for Open Source Software, for 'support' I'm never going to use?
No, in a word, that's a waste of time.

Sure management likes the idea of 'corporate' support, but, it's a misnomer, nobody in the industry uses the support and I for one, won't be muscled by Red Hat, into forking out thousands to them, for software the the Open Source Community and Linux developers, developed ostensibly for the benefit of the community.

/rant

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by Typedef
Do I really feel like paying mad money to Red Hat, for Open Source Software, for 'support' I'm never going to use?
No, in a word, that's a waste of time./rant

Previous to this I'd have said Red hat if you were using it on DELL servers 'cos it's preinstalled and so should have all the drivers..

Lets look at Microsoft for a moment
I stopped caring about their technical support when the £550 + VAT retail for NT4 server did NOT include any support - you had to pay $150 per incident as well. Then again M$ support was farmed out to Compaq or Stream or whoever put the best bid in (read narrow margin) so even if you did call them you would not be talking to Real Microsoft Employee.

Bottom line - most OS support is provided by third parties anyway.

Don't really like Debian, everything's so old...

So far the Knoppix CD has booted up happily on anything I've thrown it at - except Dell GX270 on board video (only get VGA) and it's Gigabit NIC.
Our America friends have a saying If it works, it's obsolete
There are so many examples of how "obsolete" aerospace Soviet technology works better than state of the art US technology. note: NASA did not initiate that pen - private venture and pencil lead could cause shorts moral: use felt tips

Winters

Originally posted by theciscokid
go to dcu use their wi-fi and get lightning downloads, theres quite a few spots there

I would have already done that but these facts are stopping me:
1) Student and therefor broke
2) No laptop or wifi card (see above)

Might do it if I can get hold of one of the PC's with CD burners but I can never find the time for that.

dubhthach

Fedora is nice esp. when you got apt installed, i use it for my linux box, as for Unix well i'm an IRIX fan, 2nd hand SGI box's have become quite cheap on ebay that's for sure

Capt'n Midnight

Options
- USB cd burner (if they havn't disbled it)
- Ask the college to setup a Burning service
- Ask the SU to sell common downloads - Unix / m$ updates in it's shop. However, since most of them are Golgafringen Ark B material probably not worth the effort , but you never know.

Typedef

Pffff.

You could just follow 'sarge', if you want to keep Debs up to date.

dubhthach

aye no doubt you could, but i've been using redhat since 6.0 so am happy using fedora & apt.
Anyway playing with IRIX, especially on a 40processor system (did this earlier on in the year) is more fun if you ask me

BenH

Personally I'd go for SuSE 9 (nice unbiased opinion there as in addition to it being a superb all round distro they've released the 'wine rack' addon pack:

http://www.transgaming.com/news.php?newsid=97

Thus allowing you to play BF1942 on it as well.

If you need a copy just ask

Best,

Ben

Winters

Well, just to inform you all I have Knoppix downloaded and am using it right now. Annoying having to restart to change my Settings though.

At least i can save them to floopy

zAbbo

you can save them to a windows partition as well, been a while since i used knoppix

Capt'n Midnight

you can save the settings to the HDD too (don't format it though !)
If you make a boot disk you can edit the file
syslinux.cfg


DEFAULT vmlinuz
APPEND init=/etc/init lang=us keyboard=uk xkeyboard=gb apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi vga=791 initrd=miniroot.gz nomce quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix home=scan config=scan noprompt
TIMEOUT 100

note the addition of - home=scan config=scan noprompt after the word knoppix
also the keyboard - the GUI one is GB - but root console is still US

BTW edit it in EDIT not notepad 'cos M$ still don't know the difference between CR , CRLF and LF

You can also copy the knoppix flder from the CD to a knoppix folder on the HDD, copy the boot floppy to another folder and then download loadlin to run it !

eg: Linux.bat - run in dos
:Loadlin.exe vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 initrd=miniroot.gz lang=en ro
mode con lines=50
loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 initrd=miniroot.gz Knoppix lang=us keyboard=gb xkeyboard=gb wheelmouse home=scan config=scan noprompt noeject

:/dev/hda1/knoppix.img myconfig=/dev/hda1
:loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb1 initrd=miniroot.gz ro 2 lang=us keyboard=uk wheelmouse nousb home=/dev/hda1 myconfig=/dev/hda1
:c :\linux\vmlinuz ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=be vga=791
: initrd=c:\linux\miniroot.gz apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi
: hdd=scsi screen=1280x1024 home=scan myconfig=scan nomce