Linux
 

Ok, I'm about to flush the old computer out. It's an IBM aptiva with a 266 AMD in it... I was thinking about doing a dual boot setup with Linux and XP... thing is, I've never used Linux before. It's a bit of a learning excercise for me. So then, with that being said. Does any one have a recomendation as to which version of linux I should be looking at?

what are you looking at using it for??

webserver?? fileserver?? internet gateway??

If you have XP, would you need Linux? What am I missing here? (That is, besides my cable modem - on vacation 56K modem is all there is.)

basicaly i am looking to install linux because I am a geek and want to learn how to use it. I have an extra computer that i don't use all that much and I figured it could be a little project for me. Fileserver, prehaps, webserver, perhaps, definately the basic internet functions.. yeah, I dunno.. I just want to figure out what the deal is with linux..

I've a few versions of Linux. Here's what I thought of them:

Mandrake - My favorite, it's the most stable on my machine.
Redhat - Had to use this one for university projects. Used a lot with the Apache web server. The core is stable, but the GUI is flakey and tends to crash a lot. One major problem for me is that Redhat does not have the ability to see harddrives formatted for windows, so you have no access to any of the documents and stuff you use in windows.
Knoppix - Runs off of a single CD. Great for testing if a computer is compatible with Linux.

You can find all the current versions here: http://www.linuxiso.org/

It's not a great OS, but the core is very useful for anyone who wants to set up a web/file/email etc. server and doesn't need a GUI. The various GUI's that come with Linux are interesting but years behind the MAC or Windows GUI's. Most people seem to argue that Linux is more secure than other OS's and cite the fact that there aren't as many attacks against Linux machine. But the fact is that the percentage of all Linux machines attacked is greater than the percentage of all Windows or MAC machines that are attacked. Think about it. The source code for Linux is available to anyone who wants it. That makes it very easy for anyone to find the flaws in it and exploit them. So make sure you have a good firewall set up when using Linux on a machine connected to the Internet.

Zero, now be nice. Nobody answered me about why you'd need more than one OS.

Ha ha, no I have not killed the computer yet.. It's the foot stool computer I'm playing with any way. (as in, the one I rest my feet on, since right now thats all it does well right now) I've been uber busy with assorted junk at work.

I'm about a day or so out from my favourite command in the whole world. "Format C:, yes, yes." I've just got to finish getting any and all files I want to keep off of the thing.

Thanks for the basic explanations.. More than anything I'm looking for a basic desription of what the strong and weak points of various versions are. I guess I could always switch around since it's not my primary computer.

not so familiar with linux myself, I run one system on linux, my gateway, 2 FreeBSD boxen, my desktop and the media system I'm building, and one windows 2000 box...

uptime on my linux box right now
11:55am up 114 days, 16:23, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

haven't touched it since I installed it.. that number right there is a major drawing point for me. being able to set up a system and trust it to do its job for that kind of time period isn't something I'd trust to a windows box.

as to the comment about reading windows formatted disks on redhat, should be more than possible, might not be able to get write access to NTFS drives, but read at the very least is possible.


one further comment...
gentoo, Mandrake, Slackware, Knoppix, RedHat ... all linux distributions.
linux is the kernel, versions are numerical , for example, the latest stable version is 2.6.11.7, the 2.4 branch is at 2.4.30, you want to start talking about the advantage of one version of linux over another you're looking at differences like scheduling algorithms,drivers,ipv6 support. I know thats gettign nitpicky, but .... well... what can I say... its a pet peeve of mine :)

I have a couple of systems dual booting win2000/SuSE 9.2 and XPpro/SuSE 9.2
Very smooth install. Windows has to be loaded first, then the linux. I'm using the grub bootloader (the default) to boot the systems.