Linux for me

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Ambush Commander
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Linux for me

Post by Ambush Commander »

I've finally set up an old Dell OptiPlex GX1 (designed for Microsoft 98/NT) to noodle around in Linux with. However, the old Fedora that came installed with it is so old, so I've decided to reinstall it with something snazzier (but not too snazzy, lest the machine not be able to handle it).

Here are my needs, can anyone recommend a good distribution for me?

* See above hardware specs. It's not a terribly powerful machine
* Monitor is a NEC MultiCync LCD 1760V (the version of Fedora pre-installed didn't have a driver for it, so it was kludging along with a different one).
* Wireless is a Uniden PCW100
* CD and floppy drive available (sorry, no DVD)

* Somewhat proficient in command-line scripting, prior experience has been mostly through SSHing, so I can do regular tasks via command line (but not administrative)
* Interested in PHP, Apache and friends, webserving type of stuff
* Not interested in gaming, leisure browsing, music playback, etc. (maybe later)
* Interested in configuring it so it's accessible from outside our router, for both SSH and serving content
* Interested in Unix style process controls (finally I'll get to try out pcntl and friends!)
* Interested in applications traditionally built for Linux (emulation only goes so far)
* Not very interested in a fancy GUI, but as long as it doesn't slow the system down, fine by me
* Interested in ease of configurability
* Interested in hooking up Windows and Linux by ethernet (not sure how that'd go)

There's not too much on Linux that I can't do on Windows, but they exist. So... recommendations?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

I've been trying out a bunch of different flavors recently.. Ubuntu and it's siblings (Kubuntu and Xubuntu) were all the easiest to get up and running, not to mention updating the installs that come with them. FreeBSD took the longest to install and was just "not quite right" once I got it installed, Fedora Core 5 continually failed to install due to a bug in the installer. Gentoo was a similar experience to Fedora, but easier to deal with (it did actually install.) Compilation failed several times due to oddities in the installer. So, I can only recommend Ubuntu and siblings. I've installed it on my local server.
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Christopher
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Post by Christopher »

I'd second Ubuntu, and also mention SLED 10 which is getting rave reviews -- especially on laptops. It's $60, but they say it is the first Linux Desktop truly on par with Windows. I've been thinking of getting it for a laptop I have.
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

SLED = SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop?

Judging from the feedback, it looks like I'm going to go Xubuntu.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

I second the Ubuntu recommendation. My only strong advice is DO NOT install something like Gentoo on a box like this (at least not unless you're happy to wait several days for source code to compile ;)).
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

Fedora 4 till I find something better..
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Post by timvw »

feyd wrote:FreeBSD took the longest to install and was just "not quite right" once I got it installed
Does a 'live bsd' cd like http://www.freesbie.org/ or http://livecd.sourceforge.net/work? ;)
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

I've installed Xubuntu, and mostly everything is working like a charm (the user interface is surprisingly responsive).

However, no luck at all trying to get wireless to work. I've tried two USB wireless links:

* Uniden PCW100 (they don't even make this stuff anymore)
* D-Link DWL-120 (got as far as getting atmel on to the computer, but was dismayed to find that make wasn't installed. Grr...)

Any words of wisdom?
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Christopher
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Post by Christopher »

Ambush Commander wrote:but was dismayed to find that make wasn't installed. Grr...
One of the annoyances of Ubuntu is no dev tools by default. If you are fairly knowledgable with Linux then a straight Debian install is not much harder than Ubuntu .. same for Fedora.
Ambush Commander wrote:Any words of wisdom?
Buy supported wireless hardware.

One of the reasons I recommended SUSE is that is supposedly deals with these kinds of problems that are epidemic in most distributions. Wireless on Linux will probably be iffy until Devicescape hits its stride.
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

Buy supported wireless hardware.
...mmm... just great. Do I look for claims that it "supports Linux" or is there a list out there/recommendations? Generally speaking, you get wireless cards/adapters bundled along with other things such as routers or the computer, so if I'm going to have to go out and buy one specifically for my Linux fix, might as well buy a good one.
One of the annoyances of Ubuntu is no dev tools by default. If you are fairly knowledgable with Linux then a straight Debian install is not much harder than Ubuntu .. same for Fedora.
One of the reasons I recommended SUSE is that is supposedly deals with these kinds of problems that are epidemic in most distributions. Wireless on Linux will probably be iffy until Devicescape hits its stride.
That "supposedly" is quite reassuring. ;-) But maybe I'll try putting SUSE on it next and see if it works (if it doesn't, then I'll have to get a wireless card... ah... the joys of Linux computing). Xubuntu was appealing to me because it claimed to be an official light-weight distribution: I'm still slightly worried about extreme slowness from my last experience with Linux (on this machine, BIOS takes a minute to load).

Even if I had been able to compile atmel on Ubuntu, I seriously doubt I would have been able to configure it so that the wireless card would get accepted (and if it has any dependencies, I'm seriously screwed). So I guess there's really no point in trying other distributions until I get a new wireless card.

Fortunantely, I was able to get MediaWiki 1.7alpha running on Windows (it used to fail catastrophically, crashing Fast CGI, and I thought maybe it was a Windows problem (switching to SAPI did the trick)), so my immediate need for a Linux box is satisfied now.

::sigh:: Looks like this second attempt will be a failure.
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Post by sweatje »

I went with gentoo on an old IBM laptop for my wife. As stated above, it took several days to compile everything, but since has work flawlessly. Wifi is up fine as well. That being said, I think gentoo is the "hackers" distro, I love the configuability I get with the portage system, and everything at my house (my desktop, my web server and my firewall) are all on gentoo as well.
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

Check the wiki at ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net to see if you can use windows drivers to get your cards working ;)
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

sweatje wrote:I went with gentoo on an old IBM laptop for my wife. As stated above, it took several days to compile everything, but since has work flawlessly. Wifi is up fine as well. That being said, I think gentoo is the "hackers" distro, I love the configuability I get with the portage system, and everything at my house (my desktop, my web server and my firewall) are all on gentoo as well.
Compiling is a big plus with Gentoo BUT not on a low spec machine. Doing basic security upgrades just takes too long and installing KDE or OpenOffice takes a lifetime ;)

I have a triple boot laptop with Ubuntu, Gentoo and Windows (actually there's a 4th OS on there but it's not strictly legal nor fast). I use Gentoo on my server. On a high spec server gentoo is great... installing from portage still gives you to complete flexibility you get when compiling from source manually so you don't have to put up with the bloated features you're not even planning on using.
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

Write now I'm on a Gentoo liveboot and I'm desperately trying to get things to work. Here's what's going on:

I have my D-Link DWL-120 connected to a USB port, so I assume that the device name would be eth0, correct? According to the ndiswrapper project (great resource, btw), this wireless adapter should work with Atmel. I've loaded, via modprobe, atmel, atmel_pci and atmel_cs (what are those different ones?)

It appears like my wireless adapter is being recognized? The manual I'm using, http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... #net-setup , claims that if the device isn't recognized, I should get:

Code: Select all

eth0: error fetching interface information: Device not found
But I'm not. However, that doesn't mean much: eth1 (which, I suppose, has nothing plugged in) also gives a blank reading, blank as in: (this is a rough sketch)

Code: Select all

Link Encap: Ethernet HWAdrr ***
BROADCAST MULTICAST Mtu:1500 Metric:1
RX packets: 0 across the board
TX packets: 4 errors, 0s elsewhere
...
These don't show up when I call `ifconfig`. `iwconfig` returns "No wireless extensions" across the board.

Using net-setup has some strange results. If I don't specify a network SSID, things seem to go smoothly, and eth0 gets registered when I call ifconfig, but a network connection isn't established. If I specify an SSID, I get this error:

Code: Select all

cat eth0.WEPTYPE no such file/directory
I am attempting to use DHCP autodetection, because that should work (it works on Windows).
Check the wiki at ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net to see if you can use windows drivers to get your cards working
What exactly does ndiswrapper do? And I don't think it will work on the Gentoo liveboot, since it doesn't have make. Heck, all three installation CDs I have right now don't come with make.
Compiling is a big plus with Gentoo BUT not on a low spec machine. Doing basic security upgrades just takes too long and installing KDE or OpenOffice takes a lifetime
Well, I don't plan on installing KDE or OpenOffice.
I have a triple boot laptop with Ubuntu, Gentoo and Windows (actually there's a 4th OS on there but it's not strictly legal nor fast). I use Gentoo on my server. On a high spec server gentoo is great... installing from portage still gives you to complete flexibility you get when compiling from source manually so you don't have to put up with the bloated features you're not even planning on using.
Mmhmm, I'm quite wary about double-boots because of their potential to fail. Plus, my built-in hard-drive is puny (only a mere 6 GB left: I keep most of everything else on an external harddrive). Maybe when I get a new computer I'll install it on this one.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

eth0 is more likely to be your wired network card if you have one ;)

wlan0 or eth1 are often the wireless devices.

Do you have wireless-tools installed? Type iwconfig and see what devices you get listed. If these are USB cards make sure USB is started (ehci_hcd, uhci_hcd, ohci_hcd, usbcore).
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