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OT-Which version of Linux is best?
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was
full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a Debian distro and have managed to configure a server, get on line etc though finding a newsgroup reader has me stumped at the moment..shrug. Anyways...does anyone have and preferences in a Linux distro for a beginner? Ive got highspeed access at a friends shop and can download and burn any of the current versions of Linux Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? Thanks Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner |
Gunner wrote:
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. With a machine of that vintage, most of the current distro's will work ok although I would advise against using KDE or GNOME. If you want a graphical desktop, choose a lightweight one (FVWM is pretty good) Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a Debian distro and have managed to configure a server, get on line etc though finding a newsgroup reader has me stumped at the moment..shrug. Thunderbird runs OK on linux/Xwindows. Anyways...does anyone have and preferences in a Linux distro for a beginner? Ive got highspeed access at a friends shop and can download and burn any of the current versions of Linux The best thing to do is get a LiveCD distro similar to the Knoppix you've already played with, that way you can try it out without having to install on a hard drive. There is a comprehensive list of LiveCD distros at http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php Take a look and pick a few to try. Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? Mandrake (now Mandriva) is still one of the best, if I were you I'd go for Mandrake 10.1 rather than the just released Mandriva SE2005. Thanks You're welcome. |
Gunner wrote:
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a Debian distro and have managed to configure a server, get on line etc though finding a newsgroup reader has me stumped at the moment..shrug. Anyways...does anyone have and preferences in a Linux distro for a beginner? Ive got highspeed access at a friends shop and can download and burn any of the current versions of Linux Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? Thanks Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner Have a look at Xandros. One bootable CD; sets up a virtual disk in memory and leaves your hard disk alone. Detects all the hardware I have ever tried it with. Mozilla suite, the GIMP, Open Office and Zine video player all included. If you like it, you can do a hard disk install and add any Debian packages you want. You can use apt-get to keep the whole distribution (not just the operating system) updated. Nothing to lose, I got the disk for nothing from a local electronics shop. |
Gunner wrote:
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a Debian distro and have managed to configure a server, get on line etc though finding a newsgroup reader has me stumped at the moment..shrug. Anyways...does anyone have and preferences in a Linux distro for a beginner? Ive got highspeed access at a friends shop and can download and burn any of the current versions of Linux Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? Thanks Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner Gunner i Hope you think about Novel SuSe Linux 9.x series it works nicely for me. Available at Best Buys As for your newsgroup reader I Like thunderbird myself Bit tricky to install for new guy on the system but you get a nice reader. and it has spam filters and handles Email as well. set up is a breeze. I sword off mandrake after version 8.2. Mandrake is now mandriva and I still wonder why they have to change their names. If you do not like SuSe try Redhat's fedora core linux it is the most like mandrake. TSS |
Gunner wrote: After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. snip There a number of distrobutions at: http://www.linuxiso.org/ I've been using RedHat/Fedora an have had good luck with it. Fedora Core-4 is scheduled to be out June 6, you might want to wait for that. As someone else said, use the FVWM window manager. The Gnome/KDE is really a dog. I'm running it on a 266MZ P-3 with 128meg laptop. If you need help with FVWM let me know. There are a few tricks to get it running right. -- Gary A. Gorgen | "From ideas to PRODUCTS" | Tunxis Design Inc. | Cupertino, Ca. 95014 |
I'd like to know also.
Thanks Karl "Gunner" wrote in message ... After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a Debian distro and have managed to configure a server, get on line etc though finding a newsgroup reader has me stumped at the moment..shrug. Anyways...does anyone have and preferences in a Linux distro for a beginner? Ive got highspeed access at a friends shop and can download and burn any of the current versions of Linux Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? Thanks Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner |
We are redhat users, but my "peripheral hearing" is leaning me towards SuSe.
I think that Redhat have made some poor tactical decisions in the last while that are having the effect of eroding their position as "the dominant distribution". One of our customers (a long-standing redhat person) recently did a SuSe install, liked it quite well. This fellow is a Linux zelot, has run lots of different distros over the course of quite a few years. He doesn't even tolerate UNIX well, much less anything that starts with a W. Adam Smith Midland, ON |
Gunner wrote in
: After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. Although BD will beg to differ (he's a FreeBSD kinda guy), I found Fedora to be great. Installed without a hitch on an old PII, easy to get around in, intuitive. The other thing that I noticed, it is about twice as fast on that old PII as was Debian. -- Anthony You can't 'idiot proof' anything....every time you try, they just make better idiots. Remove sp to reply via email http://www.machines-cnc.net:81/ |
Gunner wrote:
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. As another reply posted, with a system that old, better to use one of the lightweight desktop services, anything other than KDE or Gnome, like Icewm, Blackbox, etc. Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a Debian distro and have managed to configure a server, get on line etc though finding a newsgroup reader has me stumped at the moment..shrug. Try slrn or pan. They're a little tougher to learn, but are extremely powerful in their capabilities. Anyways...does anyone have and preferences in a Linux distro for a beginner? Ive got highspeed access at a friends shop and can download and burn any of the current versions of Linux Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? I started out with Mandrake 5 years ago, but after about 3 or 4 months, went to SuSE and have stayed with it since then. If you get the 'Pro' version boxed set, you'll get two fantastic books along with 2 DVD's (one contains all the sources, an extreme plus IMO), and 5 CD's (the CD's don't have the sources, and don't have quite as much of the 'stuff' the DVD has, but they'll get everything started just fine). If you do decide to try SuSE and need any help, holler back here and I'll e-mail you and get things going. If you really want a look at what's out there though, go to www.distrowatch.com and you'll get an idea of what you might want, rather than just ideas from users of certain distro's. |
On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 09:16:50 -0400, Adam Smith wrote:
We are redhat users, but my "peripheral hearing" is leaning me towards SuSe. Both excellent. However, I'm working with a different distro now, based on Debian, called "ubuntu". It has a BSD-ish /usr/ports directory, so if I want to properly build a new app with all the needed prerequisites and configuration, it's as simple as: cd /usr/ports/category/toolname make install ....and it'll fetch the stable version of the tool's source, compile it with the right options, pre-install any dependancies and configure those, and ...it just works. It separates the "what should I do" (which is what I should be concentrating on) from the "I need to do all this" (which is the brainless part that just eats time). I think that Redhat have made some poor tactical decisions in the last while that are having the effect of eroding their position as "the dominant distribution". One of our customers (a long-standing redhat person) recently did a SuSe install, liked it quite well. I try lots of distros. SuSe is excellent as well, but I really like the ports idea having been transfered into the Debian and Ubunto world. By the way - Ubunto seems to be basically Debian, with newer versions of packages. Debian seems _very_ conservative (read: slow) about adding things into the build. This fellow is a Linux zelot, has run lots of different distros over the course of quite a few years. He doesn't even tolerate UNIX well, much less anything that starts with a W. If you have any specific questions, feel free to email me - my address is valid. Dave Hinz |
Gunner wrote:
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. That's a shame. I had a free copy of Mandrake 9.1 and I really liked it, much more so than Red Hat. My first version of Linux was an early version of Slackware, which I downloaded for weeks as diskette images at 28.8. After a while I gave up, as I really don't have the time to spend with it. I saw a couple of cd's around here a few weeks ago that are just loaded with Linux-compatible software including a clone of Office (can't remember the brand name). I'm sure if I had the time to spend, I would be able to migrate away from M$ forever. Maybe you should ask around - surely someone you know has a good copy of Mandrake. It installed so easily and worked on every hardware config I had available - I was really impressed. The only slight problem I remember is that it would only do printing on a network using the Appletalk protocol. That may have changed since then. |
"Gunner" wrote in message ... After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a Debian distro and have managed to configure a server, get on line etc though finding a newsgroup reader has me stumped at the moment..shrug. Anyways...does anyone have and preferences in a Linux distro for a beginner? Ive got highspeed access at a friends shop and can download and burn any of the current versions of Linux Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? Thanks Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner I've tried many distros and found Ubuntu the best. http://www.ubuntu.com/ |
On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:07:33 GMT, Gunner wrote:
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some Count your blessings. ;) Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a I used to use Redhat, from which Mandrake originally forked. I started with a pre-release beta of RedHat 2.0. It was a big improvement over the Slackware I had been running since 1992. But RedHat (and the derivatives) was always a huge pain to upgrade big parts (like the main libraries). I had been putting off the upgrade to 6.0 for some time, did one system, and it was as painful as I had been dreading. Then I tried Knoppix, soon installed it to hard disk (Knoppix is a great way to install Debian) and never looked back. I highly recommend Debian and its derivatives. Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? My two top choices are knoppix or ubuntu. Both work quite well. Knoppix is closer to pure debian. But many of the debian developers are now working for ubuntu. If there was something you did not like about Knoppix, try Ubuntu. Otherwise, if Knoppix worked for you then stick with it. Install it to hard disk, add or upgrade whatever packages you like. (Eg, mozilla-thunderbird for a mail and news client comparable to outlook express. I prefer thunderbird for e-mail, and slrn for news.) sdb -- Wanted: Omnibook 800 & accessories, cheap, working or not sdbuse1 on mailhost bigfoot.com |
Roger_Nickel wrote:
Have a look at Xandros. One bootable CD; sets up a virtual disk in memory and leaves your hard disk alone. Detects all the hardware I have ever tried it with. Mozilla suite, the GIMP, Open Office and Zine video player all included. If you like it, you can do a hard disk install and add any Debian packages you want. You can use apt-get to keep the whole distribution (not just the operating system) updated. Nothing to lose, I got the disk for nothing from a local electronics shop. On a 350 Mhz machine you could look at the XFCE desktop, http://www.xfce.org/ I used this for several years on an old P133 and it served me well. Gnome/KDE will be slow on a PII/350 |
In article ,
Gunner wrote: snip-- Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? dunno which is best knoppix is hard to beat for hardware detection and ease of use gets boring running slowly off CD but it does survive power and harddisk crashes SUSE might be a good bet but if you have the time, the inclination try slackware it will detect little hardware automagically it will make you work hard, and curse harder but it will do whatever you need, once it trains you to ask nicely |
wrote:
but if you have the time, the inclination try slackware it will detect little hardware automagically it will make you work hard, and curse harder but it will do whatever you need, once it trains you to ask nicely Amen to that. If you really ant to get to know how linux functions, and have time and patience to spare, you could go for LFS from http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ Be warned, it's not for the faint hearted, but once you've built an LFS system, troubleshooting any other distro is a piece of cake. |
Gunner,
The question you asked often leads to a holy war in the Linux forums. Be prepared ;-) I use Fedora Core 3 (4 due out soon), mostly because I've used Red Hat distros commercially for a long time. I'm happy with it. My son has PCLinux, a live CD distro, that he uses on his laptop, that seems to be another good one. Definitely go with one of the more popular distros for better support. See http://distrowatch.com/ for choices. For a newsreader, Thunderbird is OK (as others suggested), but I use Pan (http://pan.rebelbase.com/). As others mentioned, your machine won't perform well with a GUI running. The X Window System is a pig, and Gnome and KDE add more bloat. It will run just fine using only the command line, but that will change your choice of applications. Pine for email (supports newsgroups, too), slrn for news. -- Ron DeBlock N2JSO If God had meant for Man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day. |
Roger_Nickel wrote:
On a 350 Mhz machine you could look at the XFCE desktop, http://www.xfce.org/ I used this for several years on an old P133 and it served me well. Gnome/KDE will be slow on a PII/350 I used Slackware on an old 386 IBM model 80, which I'm sure is incredibly slower than 350 - and it ran like a scalded dog. There's even a version I have on diskette which I believe is called "monkey linux", sort of a subset, and text interface only. But you could run the whole computer right from a diskette and do quite a bit of stuff. IIRC, though it was very sensitive to your configuration and didn't work on a lot of machines. I really enjoyed Mandrake, even though it seemed to be sort of "Linux for Dummies". But I was a dummy when it came to Linux, so it was a good choice for me. If I found out that there is a version of Firefox for Linux, I think I might just scrap the whole M$ thing at home and go for it. |
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On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 14:06:06 -0600, Sylvan Butler
wrote: On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:07:33 GMT, Gunner wrote: After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some Count your blessings. ;) Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a I used to use Redhat, from which Mandrake originally forked. I started with a pre-release beta of RedHat 2.0. It was a big improvement over the Slackware I had been running since 1992. But RedHat (and the derivatives) was always a huge pain to upgrade big parts (like the main libraries). I had been putting off the upgrade to 6.0 for some time, did one system, and it was as painful as I had been dreading. Then I tried Knoppix, soon installed it to hard disk (Knoppix is a great way to install Debian) and never looked back. I highly recommend Debian and its derivatives. Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? My two top choices are knoppix or ubuntu. Both work quite well. Knoppix is closer to pure debian. But many of the debian developers are now working for ubuntu. If there was something you did not like about Knoppix, try Ubuntu. Otherwise, if Knoppix worked for you then stick with it. Install it to hard disk, add or upgrade whatever packages you like. (Eg, mozilla-thunderbird for a mail and news client comparable to outlook express. I prefer thunderbird for e-mail, and slrn for news.) sdb Yesterday I downloaded ubuntu iso and wrote it to cd. When I got home last night..the CD couldnt be read. Sigh. I did have better luck with Damned Small Linux which is a 50mb distro Knoppix based. It absolutly flys on a 250mhz laptop, and is weighted for dsl/cable modem, with Firefox, Samba etc. It looks pretty good for a CD based Linux. Ill try writing another CD today with ubuntu if I get a chance to get down to my buddies shop. Gunner, still on the hunt. "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner |
On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 08:59:41 +0100, Jamie Hart
wrote: wrote: but if you have the time, the inclination try slackware it will detect little hardware automagically it will make you work hard, and curse harder but it will do whatever you need, once it trains you to ask nicely Amen to that. If you really ant to get to know how linux functions, and have time and patience to spare, you could go for LFS from http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ Be warned, it's not for the faint hearted, but once you've built an LFS system, troubleshooting any other distro is a piece of cake. Perhaps in a year or so when Ive got a better grasp on Linux. Im looking for the Cessna 150 sort of linux, not the 737 version. Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner |
On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:38:58 GMT,
(TheAlligator) wrote: (TheAlligator) wrote: I used Slackware on an old 386 IBM model 80, which I'm sure is incredibly slower than 350 - and it ran like a scalded dog. There's even a version I have on diskette which I believe is called "monkey linux", sort of a subset, and text interface only. Ooops. It wasn't Monkey that ran off of a diskette, it was Mini-Linux. I see that I have copies of both, but now I can't remember much about Monkey. I do remember that with Slackware, I settled on Joe as my text-editor of choice, much more useable than that arcane piece of nonsense that was imported from Unix - can't remember the name of it. I downloaded Damn Small Iinux yesterday..seems to run really well on my laptop. and this box. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ I have that Compaq 350 flushed and blank, so I will do full installs on it as Im learning. Run from CD is ok but Im going to immerse myself in it. Hence Im looking for full distros. Having dial up sort of limits things a bit. Needing an external modem for most Linux has slowed me down a bit, but Ive managed to come up with some externals so now I can get into it. Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner |
On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 12:57:49 GMT, Ron DeBlock
wrote: Gunner, The question you asked often leads to a holy war in the Linux forums. Be prepared ;-) Ive noticed. Even in the responses here, there is little consensus. G I use Fedora Core 3 (4 due out soon), mostly because I've used Red Hat distros commercially for a long time. I'm happy with it. My son has PCLinux, a live CD distro, that he uses on his laptop, that seems to be another good one. Definitely go with one of the more popular distros for better support. See http://distrowatch.com/ for choices. For a newsreader, Thunderbird is OK (as others suggested), but I use Pan (http://pan.rebelbase.com/). As others mentioned, your machine won't perform well with a GUI running. The X Window System is a pig, and Gnome and KDE add more bloat. It will run just fine using only the command line, but that will change your choice of applications. Pine for email (supports newsgroups, too), slrn for news. "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner |
TheAlligator wrote:
Roger_Nickel wrote: On a 350 Mhz machine you could look at the XFCE desktop, http://www.xfce.org/ I used this for several years on an old P133 and it served me well. Gnome/KDE will be slow on a PII/350 I used Slackware on an old 386 IBM model 80, which I'm sure is incredibly slower than 350 - and it ran like a scalded dog. There's even a version I have on diskette which I believe is called "monkey linux", sort of a subset, and text interface only. But you could run the whole computer right from a diskette and do quite a bit of stuff. IIRC, though it was very sensitive to your configuration and didn't work on a lot of machines. I really enjoyed Mandrake, even though it seemed to be sort of "Linux for Dummies". But I was a dummy when it came to Linux, so it was a good choice for me. If I found out that there is a version of Firefox for Linux, I think I might just scrap the whole M$ thing at home and go for it. There is a Firefox for Linux. Go here http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ it's an 8.2MB tarball. |
Ron DeBlock wrote: As others mentioned, your machine won't perform well with a GUI running. The X Window System is a pig, and Gnome and KDE add more bloat. It will run just fine using only the command line, but that will change your choice of applications. Pine for email (supports newsgroups, too), slrn for news. eh, KDE runs fine on my pII 400. I shut it down whenever I'm building large programs and restart it every week or so to clear it out, but I haven't noticed any big performance hits for normal day to day use. Nate -- Http://www.Weber-Automation.net:8000 |
Win95, of course.
You can still find copies of it for a buck at any Goodwill store and most fleamarkets. Hell, you can download it off most file sharing nets. ral |
On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 14:27:20 +0000, Gunner wrote:
SNIP Yesterday I downloaded ubuntu iso and wrote it to cd. When I got home last night..the CD couldnt be read. Sigh. I did have better luck with Damned Small Linux which is a 50mb distro Knoppix based. It absolutly flys on a 250mhz laptop, and is weighted for dsl/cable modem, with Firefox, Samba etc. It looks pretty good for a CD based Linux. Ill try writing another CD today with ubuntu if I get a chance to get down to my buddies shop. Gunner, still on the hunt. Just a heads up. When downloading ISO files. Especially the big ones. Use the FTP sites and an FTP program if you are using a Windows box to get the files... It seems that downloading using HTTP lacks in error checking. YMMV -- Big-T -- News Group: misc.survivalism Originating from a ©Win-Doz-Free-Zone: -- |
Gunner wrote:
I downloaded Damn Small Iinux yesterday..seems to run really well on my laptop. and this box. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ Thanks. I'll give that one a try and see what it's all about. |
On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:07:33 +0000, Gunner wrote:
After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some sort of Linux to install on an old Compaq 350mhz 128meg computer. SNIP Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? Thanks Gunner My 2 cents worth, I have a background in UNIX as I used an old Sun 100 (Sun's first computer) back in the early 80's. Been a long time ago and early Linux and GUI just did not cut it until recently. So I had Windows like everybody else. I forgot allot and had to relearn stuff. Over the last year I have converted most of my old hardware over to Linux. Which one is best? Well that depends on what you want to do. What I have found... Mandrake at least up through 9.2 is pretty user friendly and installs well. Great for a work station, not so good for a net server. The GUI on Mandrake is a real pig though. Do not use it on old hardware as it will kill it. KDE is slow and even the cut down(Light) Gui's offered will bury an under 500mhz machine. For a home machine on old hardware my favorite is Slackware 9.1, It is a single CD distribution, and most of the basic stuff installs just fine. May have to tweek sound cards and such, but I have had no problem getting online and up and running with factory setup/nothing fancy. One thing Slackware does is it handles some of the internals just like freeBSD. A much simpler approach. Non of the other Linux distributions do that. It lacks those GUI interfaces for tweeking the system, you have to go in and use an editor to change system files, so that may drive you crasy at first. It will force you to understand what your machine is doing and how. But once you get it down you will not want it any other way. Slackware 9.1 is very friendly to old boxes and even runs KDE on mine. Now my brother hosts web sites and has DNS servers and maintains his own boxes on the backbone of the net. He and all of that crowd use the Red Hat / Fedora that is supported by the Linux community instead of the commercial Red Hat Linux. That seems to be the one to use for internet servers unless you go to BSD which is also very popular and widely used. I still have an old Win98 box I use for testing. And I plan to build one more Windows box using XP Pro as I have one critical application that is still not yet ported to Linux. It will be my last Win box though. As by the time that one is used up the port will be done. I plan on building a high performance Linux box here pretty soon. A multi disc using sata raid and 64 bit chips etc... Will either go to Slackware 10.xx or Fedora if that does not work out. Good luck, -- Big-T -- News Group: misc.survivalism Originating from a ©Win-Doz-Free-Zone: -- |
Richard Lewis wrote:
Win95, of course. You can still find copies of it for a buck at any Goodwill store and most fleamarkets. Hell, you can download it off most file sharing nets. You know of a 'Linux' distro called "Win95"? Not too swooft are ya? |
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Gunner wrote:
On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:38:58 GMT, (TheAlligator) wrote: (TheAlligator) wrote: I used Slackware on an old 386 IBM model 80, which I'm sure is incredibly slower than 350 - and it ran like a scalded dog. There's even a version I have on diskette which I believe is called "monkey linux", sort of a subset, and text interface only. Ooops. It wasn't Monkey that ran off of a diskette, it was Mini-Linux. I see that I have copies of both, but now I can't remember much about Monkey. I do remember that with Slackware, I settled on Joe as my text-editor of choice, much more useable than that arcane piece of nonsense that was imported from Unix - can't remember the name of it. I downloaded Damn Small Iinux yesterday..seems to run really well on my laptop. and this box. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ I have that Compaq 350 flushed and blank, so I will do full installs on it as Im learning. Run from CD is ok but Im going to immerse myself in it. Hence Im looking for full distros. Having dial up sort of limits things a bit. Needing an external modem for most Linux has slowed me down a bit, but Ive managed to come up with some externals so now I can get into it. Gunner "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner Neat - wish I had kept my old DOS box and that 1200 baud modem. Gave the modem that had current loop and 1200 baud on it to a friend with a DEC. It was a DEC. Rats. Martin -- Martin Eastburn @ home at Lion's Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 14:06:06 -0600, Sylvan Butler wrote: On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:07:33 GMT, Gunner wrote: After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some Count your blessings. ;) Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a I used to use Redhat, from which Mandrake originally forked. I started with a pre-release beta of RedHat 2.0. It was a big improvement over the Slackware I had been running since 1992. But RedHat (and the derivatives) was always a huge pain to upgrade big parts (like the main libraries). I had been putting off the upgrade to 6.0 for some time, did one system, and it was as painful as I had been dreading. Then I tried Knoppix, soon installed it to hard disk (Knoppix is a great way to install Debian) and never looked back. I highly recommend Debian and its derivatives. Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? My two top choices are knoppix or ubuntu. Both work quite well. Knoppix is closer to pure debian. But many of the debian developers are now working for ubuntu. If there was something you did not like about Knoppix, try Ubuntu. Otherwise, if Knoppix worked for you then stick with it. Install it to hard disk, add or upgrade whatever packages you like. (Eg, mozilla-thunderbird for a mail and news client comparable to outlook express. I prefer thunderbird for e-mail, and slrn for news.) sdb Yesterday I downloaded ubuntu iso and wrote it to cd. When I got home last night..the CD couldnt be read. Sigh. I did have better luck with Damned Small Linux which is a 50mb distro Knoppix based. It absolutly flys on a 250mhz laptop, and is weighted for dsl/cable modem, with Firefox, Samba etc. It looks pretty good for a CD based Linux. Ill try writing another CD today with ubuntu if I get a chance to get down to my buddies shop. Gunner, still on the hunt. "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner Have you gone to the modem companies sites for linix type drivers ? maybe the internal modems can be driven with custom from their site drivers. Martin -- Martin Eastburn @ home at Lion's Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
In article ,
lionslair at consolidated dot net "lionslair at consolidated dot net" wrote: Gunner wrote: On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:38:58 GMT, (TheAlligator) wrote: (TheAlligator) wrote: [ ... ] Ooops. It wasn't Monkey that ran off of a diskette, it was Mini-Linux. I see that I have copies of both, but now I can't remember much about Monkey. I do remember that with Slackware, I settled on Joe as my text-editor of choice, much more useable than that arcane piece of nonsense that was imported from Unix - can't remember the name of it. Are you perhaps thinking of "vi"? I remember just enough of it to edit the configuration file on jove (my own favorite editor) (Jonathon's Own Version of Emacs -- a subset of emacs which is much less resource hungry -- though on my current systems, even emacs is fast enough, and does more. Enjoy, DoN. -- Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564 (too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero --- |
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DoN. Nichols wrote:
In article , lionslair at consolidated dot net "lionslair at consolidated dot net" wrote: Gunner wrote: On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:38:58 GMT, (TheAlligator) wrote: (TheAlligator) wrote: [ ... ] Ooops. It wasn't Monkey that ran off of a diskette, it was Mini-Linux. I see that I have copies of both, but now I can't remember much about Monkey. I do remember that with Slackware, I settled on Joe as my text-editor of choice, much more useable than that arcane piece of nonsense that was imported from Unix - can't remember the name of it. Are you perhaps thinking of "vi"? I remember just enough of it to edit the configuration file on jove (my own favorite editor) (Jonathon's Own Version of Emacs -- a subset of emacs which is much less resource hungry -- though on my current systems, even emacs is fast enough, and does more. Enjoy, DoN. I cold wail away with Vi but once I got EMACS - that was nice - periodic updates - I downloaded my first copy from JPL ftp site. A long time ago. I like the multiple window and verticle edit ability. Some neat stuff. If someone needs the Vi basics - I have some UNIX book here and likely a general set of commands. Martin -- Martin Eastburn @ home at Lion's Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
lionslair at consolidated dot net wrote:
Gunner wrote: On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 14:06:06 -0600, Sylvan Butler wrote: On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:07:33 GMT, Gunner wrote: After discoving a copy of Mandrake 9.1 that a friend had given me was full of corrupted files...sigh... Im looking for another copy of some Count your blessings. ;) Ive been putzing around with run from CD Knoppix, which is basicly a I used to use Redhat, from which Mandrake originally forked. I started with a pre-release beta of RedHat 2.0. It was a big improvement over the Slackware I had been running since 1992. But RedHat (and the derivatives) was always a huge pain to upgrade big parts (like the main libraries). I had been putting off the upgrade to 6.0 for some time, did one system, and it was as painful as I had been dreading. Then I tried Knoppix, soon installed it to hard disk (Knoppix is a great way to install Debian) and never looked back. I highly recommend Debian and its derivatives. Which one is best, with the simplest learning curve, best hardware detection ans so forth? My two top choices are knoppix or ubuntu. Both work quite well. Knoppix is closer to pure debian. But many of the debian developers are now working for ubuntu. If there was something you did not like about Knoppix, try Ubuntu. Otherwise, if Knoppix worked for you then stick with it. Install it to hard disk, add or upgrade whatever packages you like. (Eg, mozilla-thunderbird for a mail and news client comparable to outlook express. I prefer thunderbird for e-mail, and slrn for news.) sdb Yesterday I downloaded ubuntu iso and wrote it to cd. When I got home last night..the CD couldnt be read. Sigh. I did have better luck with Damned Small Linux which is a 50mb distro Knoppix based. It absolutly flys on a 250mhz laptop, and is weighted for dsl/cable modem, with Firefox, Samba etc. It looks pretty good for a CD based Linux. Ill try writing another CD today with ubuntu if I get a chance to get down to my buddies shop. Gunner, still on the hunt. "Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules. Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner Have you gone to the modem companies sites for linix type drivers ? maybe the internal modems can be driven with custom from their site drivers. Martin In my limited experience it's the "winmodem" type that makes the trouble.. apparently requires windows for its driver or somesuch hogwash.. John |
On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 22:18:46 -0500, lionslair at consolidated dot net "lionslair at consolidated dot net" wrote:
Gunner wrote: Yesterday I downloaded ubuntu iso and wrote it to cd. When I got home last night..the CD couldnt be read. Sigh. Ouch! I wonder if you are getting download errors? I always look for an "MD5" before downloading, so that I can verify the file after download. I did have better luck with Damned Small Linux which is a 50mb distro Yes, D.S.L. is pretty good. It can be installed to hard disk also, and a command given to make it into an upgradable debian install. :) One caution re. D.S.L., is that some/many of the programs are NOT from a debian package, so making it into real debian can be painful. I've never had any problems with Knoppix. But Ubuntu is pretty. :) sdb -- Wanted: Omnibook 800 & accessories, cheap, working or not sdbuse1 on mailhost bigfoot.com |
lionslair at consolidated dot net wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote: In article , lionslair at consolidated dot net "lionslair at consolidated dot net" wrote: Gunner wrote: On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:38:58 GMT, (TheAlligator) wrote: (TheAlligator) wrote: [ ... ] Ooops. It wasn't Monkey that ran off of a diskette, it was Mini-Linux. I see that I have copies of both, but now I can't remember much about Monkey. I do remember that with Slackware, I settled on Joe as my text-editor of choice, much more useable than that arcane piece of nonsense that was imported from Unix - can't remember the name of it. Are you perhaps thinking of "vi"? I remember just enough of it to edit the configuration file on jove (my own favorite editor) (Jonathon's Own Version of Emacs -- a subset of emacs which is much less resource hungry -- though on my current systems, even emacs is fast enough, and does more. Enjoy, DoN. I cold wail away with Vi but once I got EMACS - that was nice - periodic updates - I downloaded my first copy from JPL ftp site. A long time ago. I like the multiple window and verticle edit ability. Some neat stuff. If someone needs the Vi basics - I have some UNIX book here and likely a general set of commands. Martin OOPS - didn't get Emacs from JPL - that was PEARL. But that is an pearl of a different question. Martin -- Martin Eastburn @ home at Lion's Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
Impact wrote:
You know of a 'Linux' distro called "Win95"? Not too swooft are ya? You read that post and it went right over *your* head. What was that you said about "swooft"? ral |
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