Sisman

Never used or instaled a linux soft could somebody tell what to use in a old

computer like celeron 500mhz 128 mb ram 5gb disk.Thanks anyone

pottsynz

Pretty much the specs of my server and I use Debian on that. How used to linux are you?

Sisman

Tnx for reply
Never used one but i would like to try

SiN

can you elaborate on your purpose?

just wanting to mess around/learn, or run a webserver, or as a firewall, or ... ?

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Sisman

To Learn, i am just tired of xp
I need to improve myself in computers

theFez

For a first linux, i'd go with fedora core 2. you can download isos and burn install cds, the graphical installation is simple and straightforward, the update manager is easy to use. For a transition from windows to linux its a great choice.

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# chmod 111 /bin/Laden

Sisman

Thanks friend theFez i am gonna try

pottsynz

Mandrake is also good for the beginner. But yeah, I've head very good things about FC2 Some of the non-free distros are very good for the beginner, but I'm not in the habit of recommending them.

pcockren

I second Mandrake...it's pretty easy to install...not as good as debian or gentoo but great for a beginner

Sisman

Do you thing i can install mandrake in the PC i just discribe

bendsley

Debian's Installer isn't that hard to use. You just kinda need to have some common sense and take it slow if you're a beginner.

*sarge-i386-businesscard.iso (34.1mb)
*sarge-i386-netinst.iso (107mb)

The reason I might suggest debian is that you can download one of the above images and have a working OS. Then, you can just install what you need without having to download over 1 or 2 gigs of data for stuff you won't use.

Debian Installer FAQ
Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide
**Please note that the above image (iso) links are of Debian Testing release and the current image of October 23, 2004.

2c5e730979463b0d8b7880d5658e3cda sarge-i386-businesscard.iso
6bb2bf7493b3525e37c05ba8760aec14 sarge-i386-netinst.iso

__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

Sisman

Thanks a lot man

Latch

He's a new to it.. and you're pushing him onto Debian? And a test release at that?

Seems like there's a lot more of a chance of him being scared away from Linux. Yes I know it has benefits (install only what you want).. but to a beginner who just wants to play with Linux somewhat.. that's a huge pain in the arse.

Latch

Also.. shameless plug but Sisman, read this:

New To Linux? Want To Try It? Read here!

theFez

its kind of a difficult question to answer. With mandrake, suse, or fc if you go with a full graphic install you may be seriously lacking in disk space when you are done.

on the other hand, coming from a windows background unless you are VERY familiar with running programs from a dos prompt and navigating from command line the non-graphical installs may be quite a challenge.

with any of the distros you can decide what you want to install and whether or not you want a graphic or command line only interface.

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# chmod 111 /bin/Laden

Viros

Mandrake has been the most user friendly distro to me. Its very close to windows in ease of use. Dont worry about your hardware specs you can run linux on a 4 function calculator

Sisman

Thanks a lot people

bendsley

I think he should be able to install Debian fine. The testing release is really very stable. If you want to familiarize yourself more with computers, why not just go balls first and become a geek.

Oh yeah, and RPM's suck. Aptitude for debian is much better (personal opinion).

__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

zero2

You should give redhat, mandrake, or suse a try. You can also use a one of those live cds so that you don't actually have to install linux on the HDD the os fits on a single cd-r.

piesen

I just installed suse 8.2 and once i figured out that I had to set the bios to boot from CD (thanks to this Forum) it was all a snap.
Its fairly easy to use for the basic uses like browsing, writing email, letters ect it even comes with a program that works with AIM, MSN, ICQ just cool. Im still learning but I like it alot.
I say this take the jump you will bitch alittle but then you will say uhmm I see

Good Luck

nick1701a

I would suggest Mandrake also. It was the first Linux distro I installed and served me well through several versions until I moved to Gentoo. It is easy to install and configure. If you just want to try Linux without installing it, I'd recommend Knoppix.

irseg

I started with Slackware, and that's what I'd recommend if you really want to learn Linux (which is fun, and a great resume booster!). First, it's more of a barebones distribution so it will run faster on an older computer. Second, if you install RedHat/Fedora, Mandrake, etc. it's quite possible that you'll never actually learn Linux. They come with so many point-and-click config and administration tools that you could easily use it and never have to see a bash shell, manually edit config files, download and compile tarballs, recompile your kernel, etc. It'd basically be like Windows but without as many applications and games. Slackware has very little in the way of configuration tools, package management, etc., so it forces you to learn your way around Linux.

That said, I use Red Hat/Fedora these days. It's very widely used/supported, and the package management/autoconfig tools do come in handy when I have 5 servers that I need to deploy right away and then administer. And since I use one distro consistently, I can hop on any of the several servers I deal with and know exactly where everything is (various distributions tend to put configuration files and such in slightly different places, which can get annoying). So it's convenient, but when I need to compile a bunch of custom software or solve a weird problem, I'm very glad I have the experience I got from cutting my teeth on Slackware.

Oh and I don't know how Debian is these days, but the last time I messed with it (5 years ago or so) it was sheer hell. I don't think I ever got the setup boot up successfully. I'm sure it's better now, but after that experience I haven't been too willing to spend more time with it.

bendsley

Debian has come a long way in 5 years, just as every other distro has. Look where Windows and the Mac OS are now as opposed to 5 years ago.

Debian's installer isn't hard to use. And the netinst of Debian is very lightweight.

__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

Latch

The communities of some other distros seem to be a lot friendlier to noobs than the debian community... or so I've heard.

zhevek

I would have to suggest Fedora Core 2 for a beginner, as well.

Though, in the long run, Debian is easily the best, as Apt is the most wonderful package/program manager in existance

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Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil

bendsley

zhevek: do you use apt-get or aptitude? if you use apt-get, then you don't know what you're missing with aptitude, sooo much better.

__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

Latch

portage > apt/yum > rpm

IMHO

vox_rox

I found that mandrake, up to 9.2, installed really well, but I got tired of not being able to access the mandrake rpm's because of the whole mandrakje club thing. I have just downloaded a new distro based on Debian called Ubuntu, and I'm hoping for good things from that. Slimmed down, no stuff you don't need, and access to the entire Debian library of software, I'm thoinking you can't go wrong. Just need to add a couple things to a econd-hand Dell GX1 500 mhz pIII and I'l ltest it, probably this weekend.

bendsley

I think you'll be happy with a Debian-based distro. Although Latch may disagree and make you head down the gentoo path.

__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

terkz

Suse 9.1 Personal is pretty good and only 1 CD .

Latch

Yeah, definite push for Gentoo... although.. for first time.. maybe not for you.

I'd stick to SuSE, Fedora, or Mandrake.

Although, with your old(er) machine, you may want something like Gentoo or even (*cringe*Debian*cringe* ).

Anyways, DamnSmallLinux (www.damnsmalllinux.org) is pretty cool. 50 meg bootable image (burn it to CD, copy it to USB drive, whatever). Has quite a bit of stuff, too. (Yes, I know it's based on Knoppix which is based on Debian).

Xirax

Gentoo's probably the best way you can go if you want to learn, but I don't think it might be the best for a beginner. Start of with something easier, like Mandrake or Fedora, get in the Linux train of thought, then maybe give Gentoo a try...

I've stuck with Gentoo because I've realized how great portage is compared to other package management systems I've used. Whatever floats your own boat, I like to think. There's a distro for everyone's tastes

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jonjon42

yeah slack is a good bare bones distro for slower boxes. I do think you should find a different package manager for it though....

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A damn dirty hippie without the dirty part....

Michael_Hale

I decided to install Fedora Core 2 the other day. Its not a good idea if your going to dual boot. In my experince, Fedora Core 2 changes the hard drive from LBA to CHS, causing Windows to not work. I installed SuSe and its pretty easy to use. Just have fun with the Geforce Drivers.

bacon_masta

Mandrake, Fedora, or an older version of redhat are great for beginners. my personal preference is Slackware, but it's intended for a user with a little more experience. just to warn you, genTOO may not be a great idea for a beginner, i learned that the hard way. i love working with linux, and hope you do too. good luck

Latch

There is a way to fix this so you don't have to reinstall. I've seen it before... just google "Fedora Core 2 Dual Booting".. it'll come up.

Also, NVidia has it's own (binary) distribution of drivers that is much better than the xorg/XFree ones. You run the install program as root (outside of Xwindows), and then edit your xorg/XFree config file to use this new driver it created and voila.. good drivers for your GeForce

skaven

I believe that it's not said nearly enough: If you're going to jump into linux, have http://www.tldp.org handy at all times, and of course google groups and google. It doesn't matter all that much which distro you choose to get started with. Obviously something like Gentoo will scare you away, but most of the other ones are pretty straightforward.

What I always tell my friends when they start talking about switching to Linux is to "not give up". You'll get very frustrated with it and think "well I could do this so easily with Windows!!! Stupid linux!!!". You've got to remember that linux is NOT windows! It can do everything windows can do, and then some, but you've really got to approach it as a completely different computing experience rather than a drop-in replacement for windows.

/dont know why but i felt all that just needed to be said

TheProf

An issue is the hardware he's interested in running Linux on. I recently installed Redhat 9 on a Dell Pentium III machine with 128 MB ram and it just grinds. VERY SLOW. It was faster running Win98.

However, when I dropped in Knoppix, it was much faster. Considering that Knoppix is running off the CD, that's an impressive thing.

Given that he is interested in learning, etc. a live CD such as Knoppix may be the best bet - smooth, fast, and not much room for damage! And if he prefers, he can install Knoppix to run off the HD and get rid of the CD.

tekaweni

Gentoo will squeeze the most performance out of your box, but probably not the best choice for a beginner. Try any of the pre-compiled distributions, most of them have decent installers that'll have you up and going without any loss of blood.

Let us know how you go...

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If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten

OperativeK

Dude did nobody mention Knoppix. If not then your all nuts! lol jk but seriously check out the live cd version and then if you like it enough you can install to the Hd. -OpK