On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:45:22 -0800, Patty wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "geremy condra" <debat...@gmail.com> To: <pa...@cruzio.com>
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 10:22 AM, <pa...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>
>> Now I think I understand a little better where you all are coming from
>> -- I am a Unix person and I guess I expected to have to learn GUI's
>> using whatever is provided for me by default. Which isn't a bad thing.
>> And if I had to add additional software - and learn that - so be it. I
>> am using a Windows XP system and a Windows 7 system presently. Some day
>> I would like to switch out the Windows XP for Unix.
>
> Just dual boot, it isn't hard.
>
IME you'll find that networking a Windows box to an older, slower PC thats
rescued from the attic will be much more useful than a single dual-boot
arrangement.
Linux will run at a usable speed on a PC with 512 MB RAM and an 866 MHz
P3, though some things, such as logging in, will be slow with a graphical
desktop (runlevel 5), but if it has more RAM or you run an X-server on
another PC, which could be running Windows, you'll execute commands,
including graphical ones - provided you have X.11 forwarding enabled, a
lot faster. The Linux box can also be headless if you haven't a screen
and keyboard to spare. In short, Linux will run well on a PC that can't
run anything more recent than Win98 at an acceptable speed. It doesn't
need a lot of disk either - anything more than 30 GB will do. However, an
optical drive is needed for installation. You can install Fedora from a
CD drive provided the box is networked so it can retrieve most of its
packages over the net, but using a DVD drive would be easier for a first
install.
> True. I have a Compaq Presario that is so old hardware-wise that I
> don't think it could handle Unix or Linux.
>
What speed and type of CPU does it use? How much RAM? What's about disk
and optical drives?
FWIW my house server is an IMB Netvista that is at least 10 years old -
866MHz P3, 512 GB RAM, LG DVD drive, new 160GB hdd and runs Fedora 13. It
is a bit slow at runlevel 5 (graphical desktop) when driven from its own
console, but I usually access it over the house net from a more modern
Core Duo laptop that runs Fedora 14. The NetVista is more than adequate
for web and RDBMS development (Apache and PostgreSQL) in Python or Java
and very fast for C compilation.
--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
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Martin and Geremy - thank you for the suggestions. My Compaq Presario I know
is maxed out on memory and I checked and my Maxtor drive says it is 28624 MB.
I don't know if that is enough?
I have my HP Mini Netbook running Windows 7 and do my Python programming on it.
It is awesome! I don't really care if my Compaq had Windows XP plus Linux or
just Linux. I would be happy to just back up what I want and install Linux for
the whole Compaq and just have the two communicate. I really use the Compaq
more as an email and file archive. I would probably rethink which software
programming tools and languages I would want on each machine.
I consider myself a C programmer and SQL and I am a linguist - several
programming languages - so I would be more likely to want compilers and
interpreters, favorite IDEs installed on whichever system.
Patty
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