[NBLUG/talk] Request for hardware and distro recommendations

Chris Wagner chriswagner at amyskitchen.net
Wed Apr 26 14:16:12 PDT 2006


I'd agree with Walter and say it has a lot to do with what you want to
do with it.  If you're looking to use it as a server, that's a great
place to start.

If you're looking at it for a workstation, you probably need to (at the
VERY least) get some more RAM.  Gnome and KDE really suck up resources
to look pretty on your screen.  For the best experience with the latest
and greatest desktop user interface, I'd recommend something with over 1
GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, and a decent video card that's preferably
accelerated in X (almost anything over a couple years old will work).

If you're fairly new to the Linux scene, you're probably looking at the
workstation scene, so get yourself a better workstation to trial on
(compare apples to apples and all that) and as for distros, Fedora or
Ubuntu seem to be the most popular, Mandriva seems to have gained some
popularity (hi Augie!) as well.  Personally, I prefer Ubuntu.  I run
Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) at home and on my desktop at work (almost
exclusively!) and Ubuntu 6 Beta (Dapper Drake) on my Latitude C640 work
laptop.

If you'd like more detail than is provided by myself and others today,
this question is asked at least three to four times a year, which leaves
lots of useful information in the mailing list archives if you don't
mind digging a bit.

All in all, I wish you the best of luck Roger, if you need any help let
us know!

- Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at nblug.org [mailto:talk-bounces at nblug.org] On Behalf
Of Roger House
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:34 PM
To: Talk at NBLUG
Subject: [NBLUG/talk] Request for hardware and distro recommendations

I have been attending NBLUG meetings fairly regularly for some time now
(and enjoying them immensely, I must say) and I have finally decided to
get serious about Linux.  I have an older machine running NT 4.0 which I
would like to turn into a Linux machine.  I have a number of questions:

1.  Is it even reasonable to try using this machine for Linux?  Some
facts:
        x86 Family 6 Model 7 Stepping 3
        500 Mhz (?)
        261,492 KB RAM
        12 GB disk

2.  If the answer to question 1 is No, please recommend what hardware I
should buy.  Ideally I would prefer not to spend a ton of money, but I
want to end up with a reasonably useful system.

3.  What Linux distro is recommended?

My primary aim here is to learn Linux and associated software from the
ground up from hands-on experience.  I should say that I'm a software
developer who has been around since punch-card days (you know all those
old greybeards who show up at NBLUG meetings?  I'm one of them) so I
have some technical background.

Any recommendations or suggestions will be appreciated.

Roger House

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