[AuckLUG] questions - best PC setup

[Daniel Pittman]

"Chris Marshall" <cmarshall at actrix.co.nz> writes:

> I have a Pentium II, 350Mhz, 128M RAM with Windows 98.  I am about to
> buy a dual core Athlon or Pentium Dell PC, 1G RAM, 160G hdd, Windows
> XP.  I have the Red Hat Linux 7.3 CDs and the accompanying 110 page
> "Operating in Linux" handbook.
>
> Is my best bet to:
> - use the Pentium II as a dedicated Linux PC, after I've transferred
>   all my applications & data to the new PC? or
> - install Linux on a 2nd hdd on the Dell? or
> - install Linux in it's own partition on the Dell's primary hdd? or
> - go for a partitionless install on the Dell?

That depends on what you want to achieve.  There is *no* faster way to
learn anything new than the "full immersion" method -- so, by making
your primary OS Linux you will definitely learn it much faster than if
you continue to mainly use Windows.

On the other hand you /will/ have less immediate pain using a familiar
system.  The choice is yours, really.

If you do install Linux it is generally much easier to work with as a
complete install, so taking over one of the two machines entirely will
likely be less trouble -- not least because it makes data exchange
between the two operating systems happen over the network, which is less
trouble. :)

> And is Red Hat 7.3 (bought in 2003) good, or am I better off
> installing a later / other version?

RedHat 7.3 is not good.  It is very old and is no longer receiving
security support to the best of my knowledge.

You would be much better off with a modern release -- not least because
it will have up to date software, which RedHat 7.3 is effectively frozen
three years in the past.

Even on the older machine you shouldn't have much trouble running a
modern Linux distribution, though jumping to 256MB of RAM will help
performance with the GNOME or KDE environments.


I would suggest one of Ubuntu 6.06 or the most recent Fedora Core.  You
will probably find, on the older system, that something with the XFCE
desktop environment is nicer to use that either KDE or GNOME, but that
any of them should work passable well.

> I'm a computer programmer but have no special skills in operating
> systems.

None of the major modern operating systems require any specific
knowledge, really, to get installed and working.  

Sharing a system is more tricky, but not that much, and if you can
program you are probably going to work out any issues quickly enough.

Regards,
        Daniel
-- 
Digital Infrastructure Solutions -- making IT simple, stable and secure
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