Just want to get a Linux/Apache website running with no knowledge of Linux

[HeroOfPellinor]

I'm pretty technical and can figure stuff out, but I'm time limited and want the quickest and best solution for getting a website up and running from home. I understand if there's no easy way, just looking for the easiest and quickest.

I'm planning to use an on PIII Dell system, but I've got enough parts to throw together a newer system if I have to.

So which distribution will get me there quickest?

 

[n0cmonkey]

They should all work.
Debian and slackware would be my first choices, but Mandrake and Fedora seem to be more "newbie friendly." whatever that means.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Slackware sounds cool. How difficult would it be for a newbie to set it up stably? I could get to the advanced stuff over time, unless, of course, the advanced part is the installation.

 

[CTho9305]

I haven't used slack in years... but I did install openBSD yesterday, and it was VERY easy. Once you're done, it's just a pkg_add <path to apache tgz> and then edit the httpd.conf.

edit: well look at that! it's already installed out of the box. Ok, openbsd is the easiest *nix to install (answer some yes/no questions, it's very simple and quick) that i've used in a long time. 🙂

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
They should all work.
Debian and slackware would be my first choices, but Mandrake and Fedora seem to be more "newbie friendly." whatever that means.

Newbie friendly = a windows user will probably be less frustrated when trying to do the things that windows makes easy. (basicly getting a running and usefull GUI + desktop applications with a minimal of knowledge and effort)

Slackware sounds cool. How difficult would it be for a newbie to set it up stably? I could get to the advanced stuff over time, unless, of course, the advanced part is the installation.

It's pretty easy to set up, just as long as you have well supported hardware. Otherwise you may have to edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config file to get your GUI configured and up and running. This will require some shell expertese (being able to cd from directory to directory and operate a basic commandline text editor and know some basic commands. From the command line you can use text based browsers like links or lynx to access online help (when I say online help I mean google mostly)).

As far as getting it up and running with the services you want you just do a "install everything" and that should do it. You can then edit the runlevels to get what things you want running at start up running and the things you don't want running shut off. That way you don't miss out installing anything that you need to get something to run, selective installs can be tricky. The runlevels and stuff is explained well on slackware's main site.

Also the latest version of Slackware has been out for a while so check out tools like slapt-get or swaret to update your install against the official slackware ftp sites to make sure that you have the latest security updates and patches installed. Check out linuxpackages.net for details on how to do this.

 

[FreshPrince]

it is very easy to configure.

all you have to do is get the fedora cd's, or if you like, get a more stable release, redhat 9 cds. pop them in, they pretty much install just like windows, meaning gui install proggy. Once you're in anaconda(redhat install proggy), just make sure you select server, and install web server features, and don't install anything else. Once you're done clicking through all the other stuff, like setup nic card and network info, wait between 30min to 1 hour depending how fast your hardware is. Once it's done, it'll ask you if you want to boot into x-windows or cli, depending how you'd like, but if you're a newbie, just select x-window (GUI). reboot, once you're in, you can open up httpd.conf in a text editor and polish up your webserver. Just like windows, whenever you make a change, you'd need to stop and start services. Once you do that, you're web server should be ready to go!

hope this helps!

-FP

 

[Southerner]

www.e-smith.org (now called Mitel SME server). Installs in 10 minutes, and you admin it from a web browser. The closest I've seen to a Linux appliance that isn't actually an appliance. Easy to configure for web, e-mail, file-serving, etc.

 

[wallsfd949]

Running Slackware 9 (comand line), apache2, php, proftp, and mysql. Up and running in <4 days with very little Linux knowlege and about 1-2 hrs a day to work with. Running securly after about 2-3 weeks of reading and 'tweaking'.