Gonna build a Linux computer, need input.

[Ironmag]

After realizing that I have an extra computer lying around and recently wanting to learn about Linux, I put the two thoughts together and realized that I can easily make a Linux computer with that one. I am asking any of you Linux users any advice that you can give me on which version is good and what not. And also what are some good programs to get.

The setup of this computer is:
AMD Athlon 500
16GB Hard Drive
CD Burner
DVD Drive
Floppy drive
GeForce3 video card

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated.

[Dryden]

Well, no matter where you ask, you're going to get 200 different responses for which disto to run, so it's really up to you in the end. My vote would be for Red Hat, which is what I've used in hands-on seminars for the past four years. It's a breeze to install, and has enough built-in service management facilities to allow you to learn at your own pace, yet still get stuff done.

What I mean by that is: There's a 'Linux' way, and then there's a really simple 'Red Hat' way which doesn't require you know the guts of what you want to configure. This makes it very easy to learn with, since you can still get around the system while getting your feet wet, and be less liable to give up learning Linux out of frustration.

I'd say Red Hat Linux 9 with the default GNOME/Bluecurve desktop.

As per your hardware and recommended software, you'll want to grab nVidia's driver package from their web site, maybe both MPlayer and Xine for DVD and other video, XMMS for audio (a WinAmp clone), Mozilla 1.6 or Firefox for Web (Moz has better plug-in support), and X-CD-Roast to run your CD-R.

Once you've got Mozilla up and running, visit http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/index.html.gz for a great free book on using Linux. You'll need Mozilla ... the compressed web pages won't load under IE on a Windows PC.

Good Luck!

[painTech]

debian. easiest distro to use. pop it in and it works.

[Jonneh]

nobody wants to learn lunix. Just use windows like normal people, what's wrong with you?

[Ironmag]

As a matter of fact, I do want to learn Linux. Also, I use both Windows and Mac OS X. It will never hurt to know more about different operating systems, especially when I'm looking at going into system administration in about 4-5 years.

Anyhoo, thanks for the info guys, I'll look into all the possibilities.

[11_Mile_TMaster]

Originally posted by painTech
debian. easiest distro to use. pop it in and it works.

Now THAT'S comedy. I've seen lots of botched debian installs.


I'd reccomend you try something in the Slackware 9 Series. Yes, It's not as accepted as Redhat, but it is a very nice distro. I put it on my laptop, and everything but the dialup modem was detected without problems. It even managed to find my wireless network card properly. I installed it on a friends desktop, and everything was once again smooth as silk.

[sps16]

Suse linux is really easy to setup as well

[bornl33t]

I'm currently running a linux partition for school. I just kinda went with what we were using at school for the obvious reason of duplicating school work at home and vise versa. From my understanding red hat is currently the most used release of linux. "Currently" because they are going to copy write their stuff and it will no longer be free as of their next version. The current vers 9 is a very easy to install and use version and is heavly loaded with x-tras. The GUI kde or gnome are both very similar to windows and make for a good base to start linux opperations with a windows mindset. It also comes with it's own OS swapper, actually 2 of them but lilo is considered outdated and unstable with the new versions of windows ( after 98 ). Grub is easy to use and relative problem free. I did have one burp on my home computer. And it solved it self.

I can't comment on other linux releases suse acording to my teacher is the bomb, irronicly he teaches on red hat?? I recommend you start with red hat and down the road broaden your understanding of linux OS's.

As for hte actuall hardware, alot of ppl say that linux runs very well on older setups. I'd like to contradict that. If you want anything other then the minimum install you're going to need at least 512m of brain power to run red hat vers 9. The install we tried on a 486 p2 with 132 megs took the better part of 4 hours.

I'm not anywhere near an experianced user, but I will do my best to help out if you need anything.

[Ironmag]

Just a quick question, what is the difference between the SRPMS and the 386 iso's on the Red Hat downloads.

[Dryden]

Originally posted by Ironmag
Just a quick question, what is the difference between the SRPMS and the 386 iso's on the Red Hat downloads.

386 ISOs are the ready-to-run binaries for Intel (and clones like AMD) processors, SRPMS are the source code. If you're doing any recent Red Hat version, you need to grab the three [3] i386 CDs. They should be numbered. The SRPMS are not necessary.

The first CD should be named something like shrike-i386-disc1.iso, and it is bootable.

FYI, RPM = RedHat Package Manager (similar to Windows installer packages like .cab and .msi files which catalog versioning for easy add/remove).