Linux - which version for my AMD K2 350Mhz?
Linux - which version for my AMD K2 350Mhz?
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thepeoplespal

Original Poster:

1,692 posts

304 months

Friday 5th November 2004
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I've an old 350Mhz AMD computer with a Super Socket 7 Motherboard and an old ATI All-in-wonder pro 64MB (the one with the TV tuner and lots of other bits and pieces I never learned to use), lying unused beside by 1.3Ghz machine.

I've also got a ecommerce site on a Linux virtual host, which I think runs Apache (what a mistake that was - think I'll ask what can't you do, next time) and I was looking to test drive a few new innovations like changing to a MySQL database from a CSV one and .htaccess changes (even though my current host won't allow me to do that) as well as a few hacks for the shopping cart software, before trying to get it online.

Bearing in mind that I'm a complete numptie with regard to Linux, what version of Linux is going to handhold me the most and cause the least problem setting up on my old computer to run a copy of my cart software (Click cart pro) and install a database etc..?

Sorryz for the long post folks.

Pigeon

18,535 posts

273 months

Saturday 6th November 2004
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Try one of the liveCDs, like Knoppix, Mepis etc. There are quite a few others - see google.

thepeoplespal

Original Poster:

1,692 posts

304 months

Saturday 6th November 2004
quotequote all
Pigeon said:
Try one of the liveCDs, like Knoppix, Mepis etc. There are quite a few others - see google.


Live CDs?? Never heard of Knoppix or Mepis either, was Redhat and Corel when I was last looking.

zaktoo

1,401 posts

267 months

Saturday 6th November 2004
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Ubuntu Linux also has a boot-from-cdrom live cd so you can try it... it is the distro du jour at the moment, looking forward to trying it myself.

Ciao

Zak

zumbruk

7,848 posts

287 months

Saturday 6th November 2004
quotequote all
thepeoplespal said:

Pigeon said:
Try one of the liveCDs, like Knoppix, Mepis etc. There are quite a few others - see google.



Live CDs?? Never heard of Knoppix or Mepis either, was Redhat and Corel when I was last looking.


"Live CDs" are bootable complete Linux systems on a CD which allow you to try before you reformat your disks.

I've always been perfectly happy with Red Hat, although Suse has it's fans too. Debian's good if you're an ultra-geek.

Personally, I see little point in rushing round trying dozens of distros - functionally they are all very similar, and the differences are mostly religious.

Pigeon

18,535 posts

273 months

Saturday 6th November 2004
quotequote all
The ultra-geek-ness of Debian is really only apparent on the initial installation. There is a new version out soon which changes this. Once you get it installed, its mechanism for installing new stuff is much better than that of Red Hat and related distros.

Knoppix is based on Debian but without the installation difficulties. You can try it out by running it off the CD, and if you like it you can then install it on the hard disk.

Corel is a stunted version of Debian which was way out of date the last time I looked and I don't think it's around anymore.

thepeoplespal

Original Poster:

1,692 posts

304 months

Tuesday 9th November 2004
quotequote all
Pigeon said:
The ultra-geek-ness of Debian is really only apparent on the initial installation. There is a new version out soon which changes this. Once you get it installed, its mechanism for installing new stuff is much better than that of Red Hat and related distros.

Knoppix is based on Debian but without the installation difficulties. You can try it out by running it off the CD, and if you like it you can then install it on the hard disk.

Corel is a stunted version of Debian which was way out of date the last time I looked and I don't think it's around anymore.




Thanks for the details (sorry for late reply went away for the weekend and stayed an extra day), haven't been looking much at linux lately, it really has changed a bit.

So does anyone know of a ftp site I could download this from? Edited to say - found it.

And would I be able to make it bootable by burning it on to a CD? i.e. I'm a real dozer on this one as I very rarely burn CDs.

>> Edited by thepeoplespal on Tuesday 9th November 01:00

Pigeon

18,535 posts

273 months

Tuesday 9th November 2004
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Sure, but you have to burn it as an image, not as a file. Different CD burning programs have unhelpfully different ways of referring to this option, but they can all do it. You'll know if you've got it right when you look on the CD and see lots of files and directories... if you just see one huge file called something.iso you've burned it as a file.

Mr E

22,964 posts

286 months

Tuesday 9th November 2004
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What pigeon said.....

I tend to like Suse or Slackware (slackware is a unixy as I can find)

_dobbo_

14,619 posts

275 months

Tuesday 9th November 2004
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Another vote for SuSe here - the install and setup options are as close to windoze as I have found...

Although the new Mandrake (10.something) is reasonable as well, it's what I run at home cos it came free on a magazine cover!

BlueCerbera

71 posts

267 months

Tuesday 9th November 2004
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Ive been through most versions of Redhat. The have seemingly got fatter and fatter (and better in some areas). One of our old file servers is still running Redhat 6 (6.3 I think) -pentium 3/64M memory. Its been up 2 years now which is better than most the Solaris boxes we have!

Not tried to download any bits latley though. I assume you may hit glibc compatibility issues with later built binaries

dcb

6,052 posts

292 months

Monday 15th November 2004
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BlueCerbera said:
Ive been through most versions of Redhat.


Another vote for Redhat here. Their latest stuff is
called Fedora, and Core 3 seems to be the latest version
of it.

I've got a Redhat Fedora Core 2 box here, and I'm happy with it, and I imagine I'll be upgrading to Core 3 before too long.

tuffer

8,994 posts

294 months

Monday 15th November 2004
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tuffer

8,994 posts

294 months

Monday 15th November 2004
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