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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>On Wed, 19 Jan
2011 12:45:22 -0800, Patty wrote:<BR><BR>> ----- Original Message
-----<BR>> From: "geremy condra" <</FONT><A
href="mailto:debatem1@gmail.com"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>debatem1@gmail.com</FONT></A><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>> To:
<</FONT><A href="mailto:patty@cruzio.com"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>patty@cruzio.com</FONT></A><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>><BR>> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 10:22 AM, <</FONT><A
href="mailto:patty@cruzio.com"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>patty@cruzio.com</FONT></A><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>>
wrote:<BR>>><BR>>> Now I think I understand a little better where
you all are coming from<BR>>> -- I am a Unix person and I guess I expected
to have to learn GUI's<BR>>> using whatever is provided for me by default.
Which isn't a bad thing.<BR>>> And if I had to add additional software -
and learn that - so be it. I<BR>>> am using a Windows XP system and a
Windows 7 system presently. Some day<BR>>> I would like to switch out the
Windows XP for Unix.<BR>> <BR>> Just dual boot, it isn't
hard.<BR>><BR><BR>IME you'll find that networking a Windows box to an older,
slower PC thats <BR>rescued from the attic will be much more useful than a
single dual-boot <BR>arrangement. <BR><BR>Linux will run at a usable speed on a
PC with 512 MB RAM and an 866 MHz <BR>P3, though some things, such as
logging in, will be slow with a graphical <BR>desktop (runlevel 5), but if it
has more RAM or you run an X-server on <BR>another PC, which could be running
Windows, you'll execute commands, <BR>including graphical ones - provided you
have X.11 forwarding enabled, a <BR>lot faster. The Linux box can also be
headless if you haven't a screen <BR>and keyboard to spare. In short, Linux will
run well on a PC that can't <BR>run anything more recent than Win98 at an
acceptable speed. It doesn't <BR>need a lot of disk either - anything more than
30 GB will do. However, an <BR>optical drive is needed for installation. You can
install Fedora from a <BR>CD drive provided the box is networked so it can
retrieve most of its <BR>packages over the net, but using a DVD drive would be
easier for a first <BR>install.<BR> <BR>> True. I have a Compaq
Presario that is so old hardware-wise that I<BR>> don't think it could handle
Unix or Linux.<BR>><BR>What speed and type of CPU does it use? How much RAM?
What's about disk <BR>and optical drives?<BR><BR>FWIW my house server is an IMB
Netvista that is at least 10 years old - <BR>866MHz P3, 512 GB RAM, LG DVD
drive, new 160GB hdd and runs Fedora 13. It <BR>is a bit slow at runlevel 5
(graphical desktop) when driven from its own <BR>console, but I usually access
it over the house net from a more modern <BR>Core Duo laptop that runs Fedora
14. The NetVista is more than adequate <BR>for web and RDBMS development (Apache
and PostgreSQL) in Python or Java <BR>and very fast for C
compilation.<BR><BR><BR>-- <BR>martin@ | Martin
Gregorie<BR>gregorie. | Essex, UK<BR>org
|<BR>-- <BR></FONT><A
href="http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"
size=3>http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list</FONT></A><BR><BR>Martin
and Geremy - thank you for the suggestions. My Compaq Presario I know is
maxed out on memory and I checked and my Maxtor drive says it is 28624 MB.
I don't know if that is enough? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have my HP Mini Netbook running Windows 7 and do
my Python programming on it. It is awesome! I don't really care if
my Compaq had Windows XP plus Linux or just Linux. I would be happy to
just back up what I want and install Linux for the whole Compaq and just
have the two communicate. I really use the Compaq more as an email and
file archive. I would probably rethink which software programming tools
and languages I would want on each machine.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I consider myself a C programmer and SQL and I am a
linguist - several programming languages - so I would be more likely to want
compilers and interpreters, favorite IDEs installed on whichever system.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Patty</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>