Lets talk about Linux :)

[jivex5k]

Out of lack of activity I have been toying with the idea of installing a linux distro on my old laptop. Having formely run FreeBSD on it I am partial to gentoo and their portage system. Another distro I've been considering is debian, they have a good package reputation. The problem is both distros are somewhat known for tedious installation. Remarkably, I feel quite comfortable with FreeBSD, but have to urge to give linux a try. I am considering turning this laptop into a dedicated file server so I could listen to my songs in the office. Now you may be saying, why go with distros like gentoo or debian for a server. Well, I'm partial to GUIs, running a text based server would leave me a little worried. I grew up on windows, I need to see things. I have downloaded the 7 debian iso files and am burning them, I will try installing it tonight and let you guys know how it goes. If I don't like it i'll try gentoo. The ports system is excellent, and I am thrilled there is a linux distro that has adopted it. Debian uses somewhat of the same concept (automatically gets dependencies), but comes with precompiled packages. This may be faster, but you cannot customize the software (i.e. take out options you do not need thus making the program more efficient). The journey begins tonight.

Recommendations for other distros are welcome. I love customization, (if thats a word).

 

[Zanth]

You can get the debian source of course...it is just that the packages are so much easier to deal with. For a file server, secured..I would go with nothing but FreeBSD, otherwise Debian is the way to go in my opinion. Of course, I'm biased...I have been running debian for 7 years

 

[jumpy]

I'm *BSD partial too, and from my experience with linux (redhat, SuSE, debian, gentoo, slackware) I like the clean and coherent style of slackware. So that would be my recommendation.

Another option would be to stay on the BSD path and try something like NetBSD. It's amazing how simple and smart the system is with so many ports (netbsd ports = architectures, not software pacakges).

Anyway if linux is a must, give Slack a shot.

 

[neil]

Slackware has been my favorite distro. I do come from the CLI (command-line interface) text / server camp. I don't like GUI installs, and I'm not just trying to be a hard ass either. Just a quick story -- I once received a copy of Mandrake (RedHat derivation) with a server we purchased, and I thought, "What the hell, give it a whirl." What do you know, a GUI install. So, during the install there was this option with a checkbox. But the checkbox was actually more like a box with a [ ] colored-block between the braces. I couldn't tell which color/pattern was checked or unchecked. I was floored. I literally popped out the CD, tossed it in the trash, and booted up my Slackware install disc.

Slackware isn't that difficult of an install. It can be completely menu driven, and within 30 minutes you can have a useful install with everything from your C libraries, to the whole X & KDE going, etc. All of the required packages are pre-compiled and ready to roll. Go ahead and download an ISO from a mirror today. Version 10.0 is out now. I mean, you do want to have a general understanding of what packages are required and optional, but you know what, you can easily remove unused packages later with a single command.

There's also a nifty package manager that you can use called swaret. Very easy to use. For instance, I needed to install the package imagemagick, and to install it, you simply type in:

swaret --install imagemag (it does partial matches, which is VERY cool)

All packages that are available from the install time, you can install later on with Swaret. All dependencies are properly detected and downloaded/installed on-the-fly too, if you wish.

Slackware has truly stood the test of time with our company -- I think next year, it will be a 10 years. In fact, you're currently logged in to Head-Fi which is running on Slackware 10.

p.s. If you ever need any help with your Slackware box, send me a P.M. I'd be glad to help if I can. (remember, I'm not a GUI guy)

 

[jivex5k]

Quote:

All packages that are available from the install time, you can install later on with Swaret. All dependencies are properly detected and downloaded/installed on-the-fly too, if you wish.

I had wanted to go with slackware but heard the packaging system left it up to you to get dependencies. Swaret has saved me. I'll try out slackware after some time with debian. I cant waste 6 cd's....
I'm glad there are some linux/BSD people on this forum.
As an afterthought, has anyone heard of AGnula. It's a distro focused on multimedia. I've toyed with some music programs in FreeBSD but....*cough*

Damn, I'm gonna end up with about 5 distros.....

 

[mjg]

debian is not hard to install, follow the directions to the T. the apt-get setup is my very favorite. RPM is garbage, and i hate dealing with them.

deb packages are as easy to deal with as rpms, but don't have some of the problems... also setting up rpm drake or whatever is annoying, i hate mandrake/redhat.

 

[shimage]

If you know what you're doing (and I assume you do), then debian shouldn't be a problem. I wouldn't have chosen vanilla debian, personally, since there are plenty of debian-based distros out there that do a much better job of dealing with the install (e.g. Knoppix), but I think it's only important if you're new to things.

I used debian for a year, and then switched to gentoo. I suppose that it's mostly a personal decision. Not all of the packages played nicely with each other on my debian boxes, and they have this really irritating policy of not "dirtying" the package database with not-open-sourced code, so that even though gentoo's package database is much smaller than debian's, it has more of the programs that I actually use. Lastly, I felt that gentoo's organizational system was easier to deal with (particularly wrt init scripts and config files).

The big, huge, fat problem with gentoo is the fact that you ordinarily need to compile everything (not true, but I don't think that gentoo makes it particularly easy to get binaries). On a "modern" computer (something I would class as 2--3 years old or less) it'll take about 10 or so hours to compile KDE or gnome, so you'd want to leave that for overnight. As for the install, I actually like gentoo's better than debian's, probably due to the inifinitely superior documentation. The 40 MB download doesn't hurt either

There are a whole bunch of distros with package managers nowadays, so you might want to experiment. Distrowatch is pretty good about getting information out about the plethora of choices. Also, I would reconsider your requirement of a gui. I think on a server it's a little extraneous. I pretty much run my server entirely through an ssh terminal, so I don't even have a monitor hooked up to the thing. In this case, it doesn't make any sense to install X.

 

[jivex5k]

The machine is not going to be a large server, just want to be able to access my music files at work. No website or gaming or any large bandwith server. I'm also doing it because it's fun, for me at least.

There is one slight problem right now and that is I can't find the AC adapter to my old laptop. Oh well ill get it soon enough. Maybe I'll dual boot this one.

 

[mjg]

if you want to have some fun, why not go back to roots and try out slackware ? : ]


that was my first linux, o say back in 1994. Debian is great, i never bothered trying a gagillion distributions. I guess suse can be painless to setup also.

 

[k.ODOMA]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shimage I used debian for a year, and then switched to gentoo. I suppose that it's mostly a personal decision. Not all of the packages played nicely with each other on my debian boxes, and they have this really irritating policy of not "dirtying" the package database with not-open-sourced code, so that even though gentoo's package database is much smaller than debian's, it has more of the programs that I actually use.

Did you have non-free listed in your sources.list? I'm curious what'd be in Gentoo's database that isn't in Debian's.

 

[Leto Atreides II]

I just set up a multimedia fileserver using FreeBSD, and my laptop runs Mandrake. I have to say setting up the BSD box was a pain in the ass like no other, but Mandrake took like 30 minutes and I was 99% done. It's nice not having to switch on a usb hard drive when I want to watch a movie or listen to music, not to mentio nthe bulk of dragging that thing around the house. I'm thinking of customizing a third box to use as a router, as the one I have leaves much to be desired. Only a few days ago I thought "what's so big about linux" but I have definitely been converted. I'm already finding it painful to boot into windows for various tasks.

 

[lini]

jivex5k: I'd recommend to try the Debian based distribution Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/). It's fairly convinient, because it doesn't have to be installed on the harddisk - for a start and for checking how well it does with your hardware, you can just run it from cd-/dvd-rom. My best friend and personal Linux guru Jürgen used to be a SuSE fan since the early 90s, but got more and more uncomfy with SuSE's adaptations over the years. He has also tried most other Linux distributions as well, but I've never seen him so happy about a distro as he's now been with Knoppix for some two years or so. Very easy installation, sensible default settings and Debian's genius package manager (apt) are some of the key points he'll rave on, when one will ask him about Knoppix...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[jivex5k]

Has anyone tried mepis? I've heard it was pretty easy to install and run too. My dad back home has windwos me on his computer and is sick of it, he wanted to try linux and I figure something like mepis or suse would work be easy for the family to use. I dunno if knoppix would be good for me, the installation is half the fun and one witth a GUI...well thats not much fun now is it, that's why I'm really thinking about slackware.
For now however, I cannot locate my old laptops AC adapter and the battery is dead so I'll have to wait til i find it. Debian is going to be the first distro I try.
What would really be great would be a mostly text based distro with debians package system. Let the journey begin.
Another question I have: Is it possible to dual boot with seperate distros? I know it may not sound logical but maybe i could have BSD and Linux. I was looking at netbsd and would like to try that. =P

 

[k.ODOMA]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jivex5k Debian is going to be the first distro I try. What would really be great would be a mostly text based distro with debians package system. Let the journey begin. Another question I have: Is it possible to dual boot with seperate distros? I know it may not sound logical but maybe i could have BSD and Linux. I was looking at netbsd and would like to try that. =P

Debian can be as text-based as you want it to be. Actually, Debian doesn't install X by default (in their base install). I think the install can be as small as 50MB.

And yeah, you can dual boot multiple distros of Linux or Linux and *BSD. I have a dual Debian/Arch box and it used to be Debian/OpenBSD (I'm installing OpenBSD again when I build a dedicated firewall). If you use GRUB it's real easy.

 

[Stephonovich]

I'm a huge fan of Gentoo (once I get broadband, I'm putting it back on this box), personally. I can live with the compiling times (distcc helps out quite a bit, too), and besides, I like knowing that everything's 100% optimized for my system. Yeah, getting the right binaries for your architecture can come pretty close, but not quite.

Others I've used and dumped were Mandrake, (not a bad distro, mind, but I felt it was too newbie-ish. Tried to do too much stuff for me, much like Windows. I install Linux because I want control) SuSE, (an awesome distro, but much too bloated for my tastes) RedHat, (I don't really think it's all that great for non-business work, personally, unless all you do is word processing, email, and internet. Fedora Core is reportedly quite good, though) and Vector SOHO. (a little known distro based on Slack that's actually really good; very light and fast, but I liked Gentoo's portage better)

Never used BSD, but I'm seriously considering OpenBSD (or others, I suppose... OpenBSD seems to be the most secure of the lot) on a PII 266 that's going to act as a firewall and router. It's either that or Gentoo. So BSD people, give me a good reason to use it over Gentoo

This is going to be CLI only, nothing fancy, just has to block unwanted traffic and route about 5 Gigabit desktops and one or two 802.11b/g devices.