October 2003 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Re: What mix of distros to learn with? Please evaluate..

by Bob George

"Brian McLinden" <blm987(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Newbie here. I am purchasing a system to learn Linux with by multi-booting. [...] Brian, To what end? Are you interested on a personal geek-toy level, or do you see this as a career enhancment? Are you most interested in ease-of-use and features for end-users, or as a network/system administrator? Do you want to develop software, or stricly use end-user apps? Each distribution has relative strenghts and weaknesses in each of these areas. If yuo're trying to replace your Windows desktop, you'll have different priorities than if you're trying to learn "Enterprise" systems support. > [...] > I want to learn with diverse systems that are easy to modify/reconfigure/ > maintain/upgrade after the box arrives. Would you say this a good mix of > distros fo initial learning purposes, or would you suggest I consider another > mix or approach--and why? I would second Matt's recommendations to pick one first (few are "bad"), and get familiar with it before going all-out. I started with RedHat as my first serious Linux distribution, then, after I understood why I didn't like some RedHat conventions, had a much better idea of what I really wanted. I finally settled on Debian, but the bulk of the RedHat experience still applied. - Bob

Oct. 6, 2003

REMINDER: Upcoming meeting Thursday Oct 9th

by Andy Stewart

Hi everybody, Our next WLUG meeting is coming up soon. This e-mail is a friendly reminder of that fact. This meeting will be held in a totally new location on the WPI Campus in Worcester, MA USA. The location is called the "Access Grid" room, and it is located in the "lower wedge" of Morgan Hall. Detailed directions appear on the recently updated WLUG website. I'll try to post a few of my penguin signs to guide you. I'm told that this room has some great projection equipment and can hold approx. 20-25 people without a problem. At this meeting, Doug Waud will talk about and demonstrate some genealogical Linux software called Lifelines. As I don't expect this to take the entire duration of the meeting, I'll also bring my laptop and demonstrate XFce version 4, a lightweight desktop for Linux. In addition, I was asked to spend a few minutes describing a couple of commands for the new Linux users of the group. We can also explore the capabilities of the new meeting room and make plans for its use at future meetings. After the meeting, we'll go out for pizza and beer at the Boynton Restaurant. See ya later! Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

Oct. 6, 2003

Re: [Wlug] What mix of distros to learn with? Please evaluate..

by Walt Sawyer

I use Red Hat version 9. With the execption of a couple of screen savers giving me trouble, I have found it to be stable and easy to use. I signed up on the Red Hat Network for $60./year and the updates are easily installed before the news is released. I bought the distro at a computer show last April, and installed it on a box with a P2 cpu, 128mB RAM, 6gig HD. It's slow sometimes (like with a big job from the GIMP), but for the most part, I have been satisfied with it. Walt [image] [image] [image] Walt Sawyer wsawyer(a)norfolk-county.com On Sat, 2003-10-04 at 08:57, Matt Higgins wrote: > Brian, > > > I would start by getting used to one distro before venturing out. If you are not > familiar with Linux/UNIX at all there will be a steep learning curve before you > build up your command line vocabulary. With that said I think RH is a great > starter distro. The installer is one of the best, and for someone new to Linux > rpm's are the best way to get you where you want fast (rpmfind is your friend). > > Matt > > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug >

Oct. 5, 2003

Re: Old hardware

by doug waud

Hi all When I first saw that "Old Hardware" juxtaposed to "Keith Wright" I thought I should point out I am still older. And isn't the term "wetware"? Keith Wright wrote: > You're my kind of guy. This would maybe be better as a reply > to someone else, but I'de rather talk to someone who doesn't > think 12Mb of RAM is too small to bother with. Keith, I have always wondered how much memory you have on your abacus. I am always amazed you can get emacs to run on it! :-) doug

Oct. 4, 2003

Re: [Wlug] what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Matt Higgins

Brian, If you are just using this as a workstation the SCSI disks may be a bit of overkill. Don't get me wrong large reads will be fast but for the most part you will be working in a shell, vi/emacs, browsing the web, etc.. none of these operations are disk intensive. If you are interested in data integrity you could save your self a few hundred bucks and get 2 120GB IDE disks put them on different channels and use Linux to do a software mirror. RH9 will allow you to set this up at install time. If you are interested in general speed improvement I would look at bus and cpu clocks with a focus on the ram bus. It sounds like you have money to spend, you may also want to look at an SATA Intel 865 board. This board offers dual channel DDR RAM slots, SATA and regular ATA, go with the 3GHz HT cpu. Looks like any way you go you will have a screamer! Matt

Oct. 4, 2003

Re: [Wlug] what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Andy Stewart

On Saturday 04 October 2003 7:57 am, Brian McLinden wrote: > Hello -- I'm new here, and hoping to meet many of you soon! > > I want to multi-boot and play with three distros for a machine that would > most likely always be a workstation, not a server. It would be for > numerical work and not involve large or many audio or video files. > > It happens that the smaller the SCSI drive, the better the performance, and > of course the smallest, fastest sizes available for SCSI are 18G and 32G. > > I'm planning to buy a matched pair of drives in order to spread the > partitions for each distro across the two drives. > > Two questions: > > 1. I'd like to use use 2x18, but in your opinion, do I need 2x32? HI Brian, I admire your zeal ! :-) I run SCSI drives in my systems at home. It is true that SCSI drives have better performance at higher cost relative to IDE. It is also true that a drive spinning at 10-15K rpms has an acoustic quality which my ears don't like. I don't think most people need 18 GB of disk space, but that's what is sold today. Folks who consume large amounts of disk space are typically saving alot of videos, mp3s, and pictures. > 2. Do you think 15000 rpm will be noticeably snappier than 10000 rpm? For your purposes, probably not. In a server environment with a large number of users, most definitely. Save a few bucks and get the U160 drives as they are trying to sell those off to make room for the (new) U320 drives. Your SCSI controller would be cheaper, too, if you did that. Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

Oct. 4, 2003

Re: [Wlug] What mix of distros to learn with? Please evaluate..

by Andy Stewart

On Saturday 04 October 2003 7:27 am, Brian McLinden wrote: > Hi all, > > Newbie here. I am purchasing a system to learn Linux with by multi-booting. > The three distros I'm thinking of having the vendor pre-install are: > > - Slackware 9.1 > - Libranet 2.8.1 (a commercial Debian from Canada) > - some RPM approach (which of RH, Suse, or Mandrake would you > go with? why?) > > I want to learn with diverse systems that are easy to modify/reconfigure/ > maintain/upgrade after the box arrives. Would you say this a good mix of > distros fo initial learning purposes, or would you suggest I consider > another mix or approach--and why? Hi Brian, I happen to like SuSE Linux. It is an RPM based distribution which comes on 7 CDs and 1 DVD for approx. $75 for the professional edition. It has its own graphical system administration tool called YaST. I find it easy to install and operate. The company is based in Germany and SuSE is a top distribution in that part of the world. Version 9.0 is coming out near the end of October. It occurs to me that having 3 distros installed simultaneously on a computer is a bit unusual. There would have to be alot of disk partitions to support this (a minimum of 7, one shared swap, 3xboot/root). As a newbie, be careful of this, as it is complexity not normally seen. Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

Oct. 4, 2003

Re: [Wlug] What mix of distros to learn with? Please evaluate..

by Matt Higgins

Brian, I would start by getting used to one distro before venturing out. If you are not familiar with Linux/UNIX at all there will be a steep learning curve before you build up your command line vocabulary. With that said I think RH is a great starter distro. The installer is one of the best, and for someone new to Linux rpm's are the best way to get you where you want fast (rpmfind is your friend). Matt

Oct. 4, 2003

what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Brian McLinden

Hello -- I'm new here, and hoping to meet many of you soon! I want to multi-boot and play with three distros for a machine that would most likely always be a workstation, not a server. It would be for numerical work and not involve large or many audio or video files. It happens that the smaller the SCSI drive, the better the performance, and of course the smallest, fastest sizes available for SCSI are 18G and 32G. I'm planning to buy a matched pair of drives in order to spread the partitions for each distro across the two drives. Two questions: 1. I'd like to use use 2x18, but in your opinion, do I need 2x32? 2. Do you think 15000 rpm will be noticeably snappier than 10000 rpm? Thanks all, Brian 752-3033 anytime __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

Oct. 4, 2003

What mix of distros to learn with? Please evaluate..

by Brian McLinden

Hi all, Newbie here. I am purchasing a system to learn Linux with by multi-booting. The three distros I'm thinking of having the vendor pre-install are: - Slackware 9.1 - Libranet 2.8.1 (a commercial Debian from Canada) - some RPM approach (which of RH, Suse, or Mandrake would you go with? why?) I want to learn with diverse systems that are easy to modify/reconfigure/ maintain/upgrade after the box arrives. Would you say this a good mix of distros fo initial learning purposes, or would you suggest I consider another mix or approach--and why? Thank you all, Brian __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

Oct. 4, 2003