Xtreme newbie

[burnside]

Hi, I have an old Dell PC lying around and have heard so many things about Linux and Ubuntu lately that I thought to myself, hey, why not learn. I've been using Windows forever and would be ashamed if I didn't give Linux a try.

The PC I have is a Dell Dimension 4550 with 1 GB of RAM and a Pent4 2.66GHz. It originally had XP which ran nice, but then after installing a Vista Business upgrade it became as slow as a turtle. Rather than format and put XP back on, I thought I might give Linux a shot.

With that, any tips to get started? Can I just download Fedora 10, burn it to a DVD, and get going with that or are there pitfalls I should watch for. Since I am using older hardware, should I worry about drivers or hardware compatibility. Just any help you guys can give me would be gladly appreciated!

Thanks again and can't wait to get started!

[i845_]

Welcome to JustLinux.

The specs you mention are fairly zippy for an old machine. We have people down here who run Linux on i486s.

Don't worry about compatibility; Linux usually has mature drivers for older hardware. Unless you have über-esoteric hardware, or hardware that depends on Windows for performing its core functions, you'll do just fine.

Fedora 10 is a good choice. You could give Ubuntu 9.04 (to be released in a week) a shot as well.

We hope you enjoy your adventures with Linux. If you get stuck somewhere, feel free to ask. We'll be glad to help.

Regards.

[burnside]

At the place I used to work, the servers mostly ran Fedora which is why I would like to take a stab at that. Can you briefly tell me the main differences between Fedora and Ubuntu?

Also, I have 2 pcs (vista and xp) and a windows home server which backs up the two. I know this Linux install on my 3rd pc is just for fun right now, but is there anything I can use it for that would compliment my current network?

[i845_]

The primary difference lies in the way software packages are handled. Fedora uses the RPM (Red-Hat Package Manager) package format to handle package management functions. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is based on Debian, and hence uses the DEB package format for package management. Both are quite similar in functionality and have more or less the same merits and limitations. It's all a matter of personal preference, really.

That said, another difference is the extensive use of sudo in Ubuntu.

IMO Ubuntu probably has a better support community than Fedora (fixme?) That's why I usually recommend it to people who are new to Linux.

There are countless ways of using your machine to supplement your existing network. You're limited only by your imagination. You could use it as a dedicated BitTorrent handler, a file and print server, a firewall, an HTTP proxy, a streaming media server... the list is endless. Right now, you'd probably want to use it as a normal workstation, so as to get a feel of the power of Linux.

[saikee]

Don't need a PC to run Linux. Any partition will do. 10Gb space is ample.

I have a 1.5TB hard disk with 60 partitions about 65% full. It has 3 versions of Windows (one Vista-64, one Win7-32 and one Win7-64,, and the rest are Linux. Modern Linux are far better and capable of running in new hardware than the MS systems as I got an Intel it 920 CPU and 6Gb DDR3 rams. Vista is the only OS that required me feeding it with drivers.

Yes one can get an old PC to run Linux but Linux is actually more capable in dealing with new hardware nowadays.

[burnside]

Thanks for all the guidance guys! I got Ubuntu running on my old pc. I put XP on there too while I was at it. I installed some packages and things are looking good. Next thing I want to get down is remoting to it. I downloaded ultravnc and that works fine, but when the system goes to sleep I cannot access it by vnc. Any tips here? I just want to keep the machine in my closet next to my switch and access it from my main desktop. For that reason, I don't need it running all the time, which is why I want it to sleep to save power.

Any ideas?

[bwkaz]

When the machine is in a suspend state, the network card is disabled.

It's rather hard to remote into a machine when the network card is disabled.

You'll have to find some way to wake it up...

(Depending on the hardware and BIOS, you *might* be able to get it to wake up with network traffic, similar to wake-on-LAN being able to turn on machines from a power-off state. I don't know if the combination of WoL + ACPI suspend has actually ever been done, though, so don't be too disappointed if your machine won't let it work. I'm also not really sure how to set that up...)

[burnside]

Yeah, that's what I figured. No problem, I just hooked it up to the analog input on my monitor.

Anyone know a good KVM switch??? lol

[i845_]

@bwkaz

A Google search for the string "WoL from suspend Ubuntu" yielded quite a few interesting results. I do not understand power management so well, but here's something you might find interesting:

link, link
link (scroll down and read the article on WoL)

@burnside

Check this.