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Which Linux Distro for older hardware?

Not sure about even finding a wireless card for that server, that's gonna be he difficult bit.

Distrowise, debian, ubuntu server edition or Redhat, are you getting the server CDs as well so you can prep the raid array etc?

Plus side at least your flat will be warm so you can save on heating.
 
I recommend puppy.

1) It will be blisteringly fast as you have more than enough RAM and it has a non-bloated window manager.

2) It is very likely to support your wifi. There are many drivers buit in. If you're unlucky you may have to search for a puppy package which someone has made (e.g. I use broadcom's sta "wl" module). If you're very unlucky you can use "ndiswrapper" which means you grab your windows wifi driver onto puppy and ndiswrapper uses that. If you're very, very unlucky get a supported wireless card or usb dongle.

3) I run "LVM" on my laptop (logical volume manager) which joins disks together and also allows me to create/resize as many partitions as I want though I don't know if puppy can boot into LVM, it can access LVM. Do you really need that? Why not install puppy on the 18GB drive and assuming you have a huge additional drive, use that for /movies, /music etc.

One great think about puppy is you can do a point and click "frugal" install which basically just copies about four files. It can even be inside another operating system, here is my puppy installation inside Vista:

29M ati-catalyst-9.8-K2.6.29.6-puppy4.3beta1.pet
1.4M initrd.gz
102M pup-431.sfs
256M pupsave-1.2fs
4.0K sp42780
2.0M vmlinuz

(I also keep the "catalyst" package there for ati's proprietary driver and the "sp42780" folder contains my windows wifi driver when I was playing with ndiswrapper).

Having said that, I also run Kubuntu which would be OK (though Xubuntu would be quicker).
 
Ummm.....you weren't wrong.

PA310085.jpg


My kettle showing a sense of scale.

However he's forgot to give me the keys. :mad:
 
Boris Sprinkler said:
Not sure about even finding a wireless card for that server, that's gonna be he difficult bit.

Distrowise, debian, ubuntu server edition or Redhat, are you getting the server CDs as well so you can prep the raid array etc?

Plus side at least your flat will be warm so you can save on heating.
Click to expand...

fenboy said:
Really? I suppose what he spends on power he'll save on heating.
Click to expand...

It's got USB ports on the back, so I could use one of them maybe. Not the keys yet, so can't have a look to see if it has a spare PCI socket.

I got no CDs. In fact it doesn't appear to have a CD Rom drive....if it doesn't boot from USB (which it probably won't) then it might be going in the bin.

My bills are included in my rent, so its just a matter of my conscience and the environment.
 
TheHoodedClaw said:
Sorry man didn't mean to come across as a cunt or anything, but probably did. :( Apologies.

It will be a loud beast though. I wouldn't chuck it though. Sun will send you a free OpenSolaris disk https://oscd.sun.com/ might be fun to play around with.
Click to expand...

You didn't come across as a cunt. I thought it was quite funny. :)

It was free and I don't care what happens to it. TBH I really need the keys to look inside to decide it future, but the offer was genuine. Applies to any actually if you have a use for this and can collect, its yours.

The P4 turned out to be a Celery, but it looks more promising for the time being, still waiting for that download to finish to have a play with it. I'd earmarked it for my mate as its the better machine and he doesn't have one and won't be able to afford a modern machine for quite some time. However it will be a while before he can get up this way, so I've got time to have a play with it.

Not sure about Solaris, always been a windows/dos person so regular linux is going to be strange enough before getting into full blown unix.
 
OK one machine up and running! I ended up using Puppy on the very scientific method that it finished downloading first.

I can't believe how fast it is! I went for the Celeron first, though I'd make life easier for myself.

We've a machine at work of a slightly faster spec, for those who don't work in the office, that really chugs along with XP, even after editing start up, so it runs as little as possible.

Puppy in comparison is blinding, it feels every bit as responsive as Win 7 machine that was built this year. It also seems to recognize my wifi!

This is great, a very budget option for those I know who can't afford computers!

I'm now just making sure its set up for my very non techie mate, so everything he needs to do is on the desktop, clearly labelled.
 
Global_Stoner said:
OK one machine up and running! I ended up using Puppy on the very scientific method that it finished downloading first.

I can't believe how fast it is! I went for the Celeron first, though I'd make life easier for myself.
Click to expand...
That's good news. I've kept copies of puppy "frugal installs" on my various PCs & laptops for several years to play with and each time a new version comes out, when I boot it up it manages to convert my "saved" file OK.
 
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