Linux people - need your advice!

[ibex333]

So I recently acquired an ancient Dell Dimension 2400, and I want to turn it into a Linux box, since I never had the opportunity to try Linux before.

the PC has a P4 2.20GHz (socket 478)
6 Gig HD
256Mb RAM (333MHz) 1 gig Max
DVD ROM drive
Floppy
USB ports

Which Linux distribution would you recommend? I am leaning toward the Mandriva because it's newb friendly, and later I might get into something more advanced.

Also, if I want to turn this PC into a firewall, which distribution should I get? Is my hardware enough for this task?

Is it hard to obtain drivers for Linux? I am foreseeing some serious problems with that because it's a DELL, however I might be wrong...


Thanks very much!

 

[VinDSL]

I'm running Linux on a P4EE, Socket 478, 1GB RAM, box.

I've tried several distros on it, and they have all worked just fine!

Matter of fact...

My primary distro (right now) is Ubuntu 'Jaunty' (9.04). Flies like the wind! Plus, I can run openSUSE 11.1, FreeBSD 7.2, and W2K Pro SP4, in a VM (Sun VirtualBox) - all at the same time - under Ubuntu 9.04 with 1GB RAM, sooo...

I don't think you'll have problems running any Linux distro, but if it was me, I wouldn't limit myself to 256MB RAM. That's just asking for trouble!

If you're absolutely, positively, stuck with 256MB RAM, I'd use one of the 'lesser' Linux distros, like Puppy Linux (my favorite)...

 

[Nothinman]

Also, if I want to turn this PC into a firewall, which distribution should I get? Is my hardware enough for this task?

Basically a 386 with like 4M of memory is enough to be a firewall if you don't want to get really, really fancy. You can use pretty much any distribution you want since they all come with the Linux kernel and netfilter, but the more generic distributions will require that you build the rules yourself and with only 256M of memory any GUI is going to be slow. Any of the distros aimed at firewalls like ipcop, smoothwall, etc should be fine since they won't run X.

 

[ibex333]

Thanks a lot dudes.

I will probably try to score more RAM somewhere, but for now, I'll stick with Puppy distro.

 

[ibex333]

Got another question here... This probably belongs in networking, but I'm not sure if I should start a new thread.

Is there any way to network my main PC with the old junker, such that I FULLY control the old PC from my main as if I was using the old one, and switch between using both on the fly any time I want? I hope that makes sense... Basically I have no space for a second set of monitor, keyboard and mouse, so I was wondering if it's possible to do what is described above.

 

[VinDSL]

Um...

Could you rephrase the question(s)?

I just got home from a full day of meetings, and I'm all gibberished out!

On top of that, my wife and sister-in-law were watching a show called "Jon & Kate Plus 8" when I got home - and I've now been branded a bigot, in my own home - much like what happened in these forums, a few weeks ago. My sister-in-law left in tears...

Anyway, cut to the chase, son! I'm in no mood for gibber-gabber!

 

[ibex333]

Ok... Basically... Can I remotely control the old pc from my main pc through the network?

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: ibex333
Ok... Basically... Can I remotely control the old pc from my main pc through the network?

Yeah, they call that VNC.

I've never tried it, so I can't comment on how well it works, et cetera...

 

[Nothinman]

Gnome does support exporting the local desktop to VNC by default. There was also something called Synergy that I saw a while back but never had a chance to try myself.

 

[n0cmonkey]

OpenSSH can allow you to control your Linux box remotely.

VNC if you're desperate.

 

[Philippart]

DSL-damn small linux is the best choice for you:
tiny distribution (40mb), very easy to use and not loaded with lots of stuff you don't need!

 

[RaptureMe]

Ubuntu 9.04 and gentoo are the only ones I would even touch.
Although I hear opensuse and mint are pretty great too.
I have been running ubuntu since 6.04 which is abouts the same time vista came out.
Personaly had I known ubuntu was this great I would have never went the windows vista route and saved my self about $300 bucks.
The main arguments I get when I tell people this are "but you cant play games" bla bla bla which is total bs.
I have installed on my linux drive alone for games:

Left for dead
NFS: most wanted,carbon,under cover
Crysis
Farcry 1&2
Lego Star Wars
Oblivion
Spore
Grid
COD 1,2,4
Portal
Team Fortress 2
Knights of the old repulic 1&2
Track Mania
Tiger Woods 07,08,09
Half Life 2
Halo 1&2
Prey
WAW
WOW
Psychonauts
Fallout 3
Counter Strike
Rainbow Six 1&2
Fear 1&2
FoF
GearHead
GTA4

All native or through wine or cedega and thats not even to mention all the free games from add/remove apt..

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: RaptureMe
Ubuntu 9.04 and gentoo are the only ones I would even touch.
Although I hear opensuse and mint are pretty great too.
I have been running ubuntu since 6.04 which is abouts the same time vista came out.
Personaly had I known ubuntu was this great I would have never went the windows vista route and saved my self about $300 bucks.
The main arguments I get when I tell people this are "but you cant play games" bla bla bla which is total bs.
I have installed on my linux drive alone for games:

Left for dead
NFS: most wanted,carbon,under cover
Crysis
Farcry 1&2
Lego Star Wars
Oblivion
Spore
Grid
COD 1,2,4
Portal
Team Fortress 2
Knights of the old repulic 1&2
Track Mania
Tiger Woods 07,08,09
Half Life 2
Halo 1&2
Prey
WAW
WOW
Psychonauts
Fallout 3
Counter Strike
Rainbow Six 1&2
Fear 1&2
FoF
GearHead
GTA4

All native or through wine or cedega and thats not even to mention all the free games from add/remove apt..

Nice, I tried Ubuntu again to day and have major issues, grub errors, to HD errors that just appeared out of no were. I basically got ATI Drivers installed(hd 3650) and Compiz installed then had my partition magically turn into a read only drive, so I had to reformat and now I am having stupid update errors again. Thank god for my linux friend and LiveCD + VNC he fixed some stuff up and got grub working again. But I am too scared to go back and mess with installing stuff because I keep getting errors I love the whole Cube with 3d programs and how you can see them if you see it from the side and everything. I might try 32 bit instead of 64 bit maybe that will fix my issues

 

[Nothinman]

then had my partition magically turn into a read only drive, so I had to reformat and now I am having stupid update errors again.

Ext3 remounts itself read-only when it detects corruption so you've either got a hardware or driver issue.

 

[mc866]

I've had good luck with CrunchBang linux for lighter installs, I got it running on an old P3 with 192 megs of RAM. It's built on ubuntu so if you are comfortable with ubuntu at all it should be pretty easy to pick up. Otherwise I would try Damn Small or Puppy.

 

[ibex333]

I know Ubuntu Linux has relatively low system requirements, but will 1gig of PC2700 DDR SDRAM be enough? (Obviously I am not planning to do anything beyond learning Linux/Unix and possibly using this as a server/firewall)

 

[mc866]

1Gb should be more than enough