Looking for a distro

[kmcferrin]

(yeah, that won't start a flame war)

So I would consider myself and an experienced Windows server engineer with Cisco and and SAN experience, and I'm looking to get my feet wet in the Linux world. Right now, I know just enough about Linux to be dangerous, and I'm looking for a distro that will run well on some older hardware.

At the moment my only spare machine is an old 450 MHz PC with 256 MB of RAM, and I've got a handful or 40GB and 80GB hard disks laying around that I can make use of. I know that back in the day this was more than enough to run a Linux server (heck, I used to run Windows 2000 on it without issues), but it seems like a lot of the more modern distros have much higher CPU resources listed.

I'm not concerned about a lack of a GUI. I'm looking to do the following:

Set up a file server running Samba and NFS.
Set up a web server running Apache.
Maybe play around with MySQL a bit.
Play around a bit with security tools like Snort, etc.
Learn some Perl scripting.
Maybe set up a VPN with OpenVPN or something similar.

In general, I'm just looking for a sandbox to play in. What distro would you guys recommend for a PC with such low specs?

 

[zeland]

Your machine will still run any flavor of Linux without a GUI almost perfectly. At my former company, I've had a Pentium-100 with 32MB of RAM hosting a small in-house time/project management web application with a mySQL backend for about 15 users. A 486 DX2-66 with 16MB of RAM as a firewall. I also have a HP Netserver, P2-300 with 64MB of RAM as a webmail server (postfix/spamassassin/squirrelmail). These setups while not blazingly fast, ran without a hiccup and kept my users happy.

--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[TonyGroves]

That machine spec should run a small window-manager or desktop just fine. My favourite mini-GUI is Fluxbox (with Midnight Commander); the bigger xfce should also work fine.

 

[BiJae]

I'm not a Linux guru by any means. I too would consider myself dangerous with a little knowledge. My first installation was Mandrake 9.1 and it ran fine for several years. I was able to build it up with Apache, PHP, Mysql, CVS, and Samba. It was an internal web server and I didn't worry much when Mandrake went away.

When I changed jobs, one of my first priorities was to replace the external facing Windows 2003 IIS web server with a linux distribution. I had a test machine similar to your build. I downloaded and installed UBUNTU 6.06 LTS (it will be supported until 2011). I chose the LAMP install. In four hours I had a web server up and running, with a database back end. I copied my files over and viola! In half a day I had installed all the modules that I required (including a SAMBA Server) and I hadn't called one tech friend for support. I found this distribution to be easy to install, research and use!

Since this installation went well, I've been finding more tips and tricks through this forum that work perfectly with UBUNTU

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

(Mandrake wasn't so nice..)

Good luck in your search and installation!

http://www.bijae.net

"If the only prayer you said in
your whole life was, 'thank you,'
that would suffice."
-- Meister Eckhart

 

[kmcferrin]

Interesting. I had always considered Ubuntu to be more targeted towards desktop use, and their posted system requirements seemed rather high. I'll have to check them out.

 

[thedaver]

I'll offer a little more guidance on top of the excellent feedback already posted...

The key differences in the major distributions start at two major factors: support method and package/update management.

There are several distros that offer support at a cost as part of their product. Others offer optional at-cost support. Others offer free support on a best-effort basis. Yet others offer support through communities/boards/googling, etc.

I believe you need to understand how you'd want to be supported and do some distro matching around that criteria

Second is the package management for updates, new software, etc. The Debian derivatives use the "apt" solution by default. The Redhat derivatives use the "up2date" or "yum" methods by default. Still others use "emerge" and etc. etc. etc. Some distros package source for compiliation on demand to optimize for YOUR platform. Others package loadable binaries/configs that are ready to run but their optimization maybe stops at matching your processor family.

Some package management solutions are harder to use than others. However, I've found that there are almost always ported versions of anther distribution's default package manager for another distribution (i.e. apt on RH).

The fundamental issues around package management are around how quickly you want the hottest, latest stuff and which repositories you're willing trust to get them...

I'll expand on that just briefly. Ubuntu (and a few others) have the hallmark of offering the latest-and-greatest application upgrades very quickly, and do so through repositories operated largely by the Ubuntu project itself. (right, Ubuntu fans??!?!??)

On the other end of the speed-to-market measure might be RedHat Advanced/Enterprise products (and the free CentOS derivative). They generally do a good job of covering critical issues as quickly as most anybody else. However, they might take their time when releasing upgraded versions of stuff that isn't, perhaps, driven by a security update. Thus your ability to get the latest-and-greatest is tempered by their (professed) desire to seek quality, testing, blah blah blah...

To close, yes, every full-bodied linux distro can most likely get you the items you listed without an effort. But how you maintain them and support them over the life of the installation should be an important consideration.

While playing around, try everything. As you settle in to some top contenders I hope you'll keep these thoughts in mind.

Distro Watch will also help!

http://distrowatch.com/

Good luck and welcome to the adventure!

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[LawnBoy]

.02 from another novice...
All of the linux distros will do what you want. Having recently played with FC5, Ubuntu Fiesty, and OpenSuSE 10.1, I find SuSE to be more difficult to configure. They have altered the 'standard' directory structure kinda severely, and frequently use different config tools. 'Generic' linux instructions have to be translated for SuSE more so than any other distro I've tried.

SuSE is what I'm running for our corporate intranet web/ftp server. It's very solid, just more painful to config.

YMMV, and no offense meant to the SuSE fans out there.

 

[MonkeyX]

If it is easy you are looking for go with Ubuntu. The 7.04 Server version runs quite well on a system I have with similar specs at home. The setup is very straight forward and a LAMP setup is a standard install option as BiJae said. The only drawback to the server version may be the lack of a GUI. But if you are interested try checking this out...

http://jonpeck.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-to-configure-80-fileserver-in-45.html

or

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_ubuntu704

The latter may be a bit overkill