Newbie planning to convert from Win to linux

[Newposter]

Hi, I'm running 6 domains on a Windows machine and want to convert to linux for a variety of reasons - security, Bill Gates, FPSE, less overhead and general learning.

I'm planning to run RedHat and Apache, and have been given a free server - a Pentium 266MHz with 64 MB RAM and a 3GB HD. I know that it will run a command line environment OK, but how will it do with a linux GUI running on it? Is that a performance killer? Memory slots are maxed out, and I really don't want to put any money into this experiment. Is the GUI that big an advantage? Once it's set up, I'll be uploading and updating web pages from my Windows box over LAN, so I really don't NEED a GUI. Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

 

[danielhozac]

Well, everything the GUI can do can easily be achieved with the console and it's usually more customizable to do it from the shell. Sure it can take a while to learn the commands, but the man pages are great. //Daniel

 

[smah]

It'll run the GUI - it won't be a speed demon though. The graphical font end will eat quite a bit of the resources. I have one machine running on a PII 233 with 80MB of ram. It will be good to learn with. You can start with the GUI until you start to get more comfortable with the consle. As you start to pick it up, try to get away from the GUI - the machine will run better. Eventually, you will change it to start without the GUI, then only start the GUI when you can't figure out something from the console.

 

[Newposter]

I think I'll just avoid the GUI altogether. I did use a Sun workstation with Solaris a few years ago for my job, got somewhat familiar with some unix commands using shell. It had X-Windows, too, but it seemed a little slow.

I had my web sites on a 3rd party host with linux, too, so used an FTP client and handling chmod was easy and good for security compared to Windows. Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."