[Tutor] [OT] Linux

[Rob Benton]

This conversation happens all the time. :)  Debian is my personal 
favorite.  The best resource I've ever found to picking distros is 
http://www.distrowatch.com



Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2004, Alan Colburn wrote:
> 
>>Hi all --
> 
> 
>>I know this is OT, but this list seems to have a lot of folks who love
>>Linux. If I'm way off base here, please accept my apologies.
> 
> 
>>I recently "discovered" Linux, via the Knoppix CD. I must say, I was both
>>surprised and excited by what I saw! Now I'd like to learn more and install
>>a distribution on one of my laptops. I could either reformat an old laptop
>>(166 MHz, ~90 Mb RAM, 2G HD) or find space on a newer machine. Which path
>>would you recommend?
> 
> 
> That laptop is a bit anemic for current Linux distributions.  I've been
> running Linux on a ThinkPad 600 for five years, starting with Caldera
> OpenLinux 1.3, and now have SuSE 9.0 Professional on it.  The latest
> versions of SuSE won't install on less than 128MB of RAM (I have 256MB in
> the ThinkPad).  You can install a very stripped down version on a 2GB hard
> drive, but that would leave out much of the fun stuff.
> 
> You can buy some pretty nice boot-only machines between 3 and 4 hundred
> USD, and Fry's has machines with Linux installed for about $200.00.
> 
> 
>>If the safer alternative of the older machine sounds good to you, which
>>distribution(s) will run well on a machine that old?  I've had a hard time
>>finding an answer. Alternatively, if I should go with the newer machine,
>>how large a partition do you think I would want? (I'd probably use the
>>newest Mandrake, based on the common perception of its ease for newbies; I
>>don't need every app in the world installed. Once Python is in place, what
>>else does one really need? :-).
> 
> 
> We moved all our Linux to SuSE about two years ago, and IMHO it's the best
> engineered distribution available today.  I recommend the SuSE
> ``Professional'' packaging, particularly if one is going to do much
> development work, as the ``Personal'' version doesn't always have the
> development libraries without building them yourself, and some programs I
> use aren't in the personal version.
> 
> SuSE 9.1 Professional is quite complete, and has standard packages for
> python, apache, zope, etc.
> 
> Bill
> --
> INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
> UUCP:               camco!bill  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
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> URL: http://www.celestial.com/
> 
> ``The Income Tax has made more Liars out of American people than Golf has.''
>     Will Rogers
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