Linux

[Hillside]

Any Linux users out there. I've been having fun ressurecting ancient machines with **** Small Linux.

It seems to run well even on old wreck computers. I'm writing this on an old 333 megahertz celuron with a 3 gig hard drive. Windows 98 had croaked on this machine and I have no idea where the original disks are, so Linux being free, I tried it and I'm glad I did. Now there's less competition for a computer.

[Hillside]

Oops. I didn't stop to think that the name of my linux distribution would get bleeped. Sorry about that. The package sometimes just goes by the name DSL, but you can see where that would get confusing with the phone system of the same name.

[MichaelW]

does DSL have a GUI? Linux is yet another project I havent gotten to, I was looking at Debian.

[George Fergusson]

Hehe... How about Darned Small Linux. Never heard of it actually, but I'm sure it's fine. There's quite a few flavors. I am a Redhat fan.

Michael, Linux provides X windows for a GUI and it beats the pants off Windbloze. Far superior. Once you try it, you'll wonder why anyone bothers with anything else. If you don't like one window manager, you can download another (free) window manager. Debian has a good rep. I've never used it.

Linux is basically Unix, for all intents and purposes. There are differences, but they're pretty esoteric. I ran a couple of linux servers for years at home and administrated a few dozen Unix servers at work- mostly FreeBsd, Solaris, and BSDI.

Hillside is right- unix's utilization of resources put's Windows to shame. My primary linux server for years until I shut it down last fall (lost my job and my digital line) is a circa 1997 Pentium II 120 Mhz box, it was primarily a web server and mail server running Redhat 5.0. Ran fine. Still does, I actually booted it up a few weeks ago. My first linux box was a 486, it ran Windows 3.1, but that was it. Ran linux fine on it.

[drobbins]

I spend a ridiculous amount of time cleaning up viruses on Windoz boxes for friends and family
oddly enough, my linux box never has any such problems

friends don't let friends run Windoz smile.gif

Dave

[chemistbert]

DSL is a very nice canned distro. I use it for troubleshooting by booting from a thumbdrive. for other not so generic uses I go with Ubuntu or Redhat. I have stayed with RH9 instead of Fedora. I don't like what they have been up to with the Fedora cores.

[MichaelW]

Can you use linux on any type of machine? I believe I was reading about Red Hat being somewhat specific to hardware, (different releases for different hardware), but I'm more interested in the types you guys are talking about.

I'm thinking getting an old laptop with old windows to put linux on and use in the apiary for taking notes, or other uses where I don't want to carry around my more valuable laptop.

Also is it possible to get drivers to download pictures from digital cameras.

[NW IN Beekeeper]

Linux is unique from Windows in that you compile a version for your hardware.

Driver support is alright, you just have to look.

Like any system, if it is custom for you application, it will run quicker and more stable.

Linux tends to run better on older "established" equipment because they have fewer complexities as newer machines.

Sometimes on newer equipment some devices have to run "cripled" because their support is not complete.

It just depends on what you expect your machine to do.

Jeff

[Hillside]

Micheal,

If you go to www.damnsmalllinux.org (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org) you'll find all kinds of info about this particular version of linux. One of the nice things is that you can burn it onto a cd and run it on your machine without installing it or affecting anything that is on your hard drive. You can keep windows intact and try out linux for free (well, cost of a cd and some time). It's only about 50 mb and can actually fit on a business card style cd.

Knoppix is another cd bootable type that is also easy to try with windows still on the system. It has a little more horsepower then DSL. There are a few others such as Puppy linux and Feather linux. I've found DSL and Knoppix to auto-detect my hardware best.

Since none of these are full distributions of linux, they don't have all the bells and whistles that a real linux install would have, but they have browsers, text editors, drawing programs, etc. If you want to just to try linux out, they are easy and fun.

btw. You need to write them to cd as a iso image, not as a normal file write. Your cd writing software should be able to do this, otherwise download CDburnerXP. It's free and writes iso images with no trouble.

When you boot up, the systems will allow you to enter "cheat codes" that can help deal with hardware that isn't standard. Sometimes laptops need one or two of these to run well. The cheat codes are well documented on the web sites.

[MichaelW]

Thanks Hillside,
I'm reporting from Danged Small Linux.
Pretty cool.
Yep, will be picking up a cheapo laptop for linux in the field.

[Hillside]

Michael,

When you go shopping for your laptop, remember to bring the linux disk along so that you can try it out before you buy the machine. You'll probably have to explain to the seller that the operating system runs only in memory and doesn't affect the hard drive.

[MichaelW]

I'm actually looking at surplus auctions where I work, sold as is where is.

They have a thinkpad 365XD, right now at $22, but I'm going to wait out for something better. It only has 8mb of ram.

I noticed on Ebay, most used computers are refurbished with WindowsXP which undoubtbly has inflated the price for something I would wipe out anyway.

[Hillside]

Wow. $22. When you say cheap, you really mean it.

8 megs is not much ram. I'm not sure DSL will even run on that, but there are other distributions that will. Those will only give you a command line prompt though -- not a gui interface.

For DSL, I've found 32 megs of memory to be the absolute minimum of what you need if you want to use the gui interface and 64 would be better. Anything below that and the system will probably only boot to the command line interface. Less than 32 also means you may end up with a fairly active swap file.

Not that these are bad things necessarily. A lot of people like to boot to the command line and swapping is what a swap file is for, but I prefer 64 megs which gives me excellent performance and is what I'm using now.