Looking For Linux 2 choices that I will choose - make it easy to install and MAINTAIN

[Blaise 0]

Try typing this in the console: apt-get install firefoxIf that won't work try apt-get install mozilla-firefoxI'm sure ubuntu has some graphical package manager, but I'm not quite familiar with Ubuntu. I think it's called Synaptic. Anyway, if the first two commands won't work just try looking around in Synaptic.As for the server, I think it'd be worth it to learn some basic commands and get one up and running without a graphical interface. Heck, you might be able to set one up just by following a few online guides.Here are a few distros you might want to give a try (for the server): debian, slackware or fedora core. (or you could go with FreeBSD, I'm sure it has some easy online guides that'll let you set up your own server)

[ss2man44 0]

I recommend PCLinuxOS, it's free, easy, and it is loaded down with features. It has that previously mentioned graphical package manager, Synaptic. It also comes with Firefox pre-installed. I would be using it right now, but my laptop hates Linux

[FirefoxRocks 0]

Don't worry the problem is solved now. I am enjoying Linux quite a bit and learning command line stuff bit by bit slowly.Anyone recommend anything with graphics on the old Windows 98 machine?

[yordan 10]

Anyone recommend anything with graphics on the old Windows 98 machine?

Usually the old Windows 98 machines are small machines with very few memory, so almost only windows 98 can run on them.

[FirefoxRocks 0]

I have 64 MB RAM on the Windows 98 machine, not enough for Ubuntu. I don't have Internet access whatsoever on that machine also, I can only rely on floppy disks and CDs. I need a good version of Linux though, for server development purposes if possible.

[yordan 10]

I have 64 MB RAM on the Windows 98 machine, not enough for Ubuntu. I don't have Internet access whatsoever on that machine also, I can only rely on floppy disks and CDs. I need a good version of Linux though, for server development purposes if possible.

I never tried Linux on a machine having so few memory. This would be a nice test case for Damn Small Linux, what about testhing this ?
The very old Mandrake versions should also work, (Mandrake 7 for instance), even in graphic mode, but veryyyy sloooooowly.

[PhilosophiX 0]

I heavily recommend SuSE Linux, as for your system dropping out of graphical, it must be a driver fault or you might of messed up the X server's configuration files...
xboxrulz

I agree with xboxrulz, I've been using Suse Linux since Christmas last year and in the year that I've been using it, it has proven to be very easy to pick up, easy to use, reliable, and with a great community. Of course I've not really tried any other distro, but with Suse I've never felt compelled to try any other distro anyway. It is worth trying.

If you want to use linux, especially for something like a server, you REALLY should take the time to learn the very basics of the command line. 20-30minutes can leave you with a base understanding of how to navigate and pull off basic tasks using the command line so in the incident that something of that nature occurs you are not up the creek without a paddle so to speak. Further once you know the command line you probably will actually enjoy using it for various things

Yeh, I accidentally let my disk space fill up, and then rebooted the machine... well KDE wouldn't start! But it took me about 20 minutes to find the tutorial and learn how to move around and manage files in the console, and that information has proven to be extremely useful time and time again for all manner of things. So do spend a little time on that, and you won't regret it.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

I agree with xboxrulz, I've been using Suse Linux since Christmas last year and in the year that I've been using it, it has proven to be very easy to pick up, easy to use, reliable, and with a great community. Of course I've not really tried any other distro, but with Suse I've never felt compelled to try any other distro anyway. It is worth trying.Yeh, I accidentally let my disk space fill up, and then rebooted the machine... well KDE wouldn't start! But it took me about 20 minutes to find the tutorial and learn how to move around and manage files in the console, and that information has proven to be extremely useful time and time again for all manner of things. So do spend a little time on that, and you won't regret it.

I'm quite surprised that you fill up your hard drive that fast. It's best to start cleaning up when your disc has about 10GB left.

xboxrulz

[Sten 0]

id say if u want something smallish then either kubuntu or ubuntu depending on wot desktop environment u like (kubuntu has kde and ubuntu has gnome)if u want something bigger and better then either fedora or opensuse.although, with only 64 megabytes of ram, you probably would have a hard time running pretty much anything. they would all be too slow. on the linux website (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) u can use the search thing to find a minimalistic distribution.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

if you only have 64 MB of RAM, I highly suggest you to upgrade since X server + KDE or GNOME requires at least 128MB RAM to run properly.xboxrulz

[docduke 0]

I have been a fan for many years of SuSE linux. I believe I started with version 4 or 5. Back in the early days, I fried one monitor and another video card with it, but liked it enough that I persevered. I have SuSE 8.1 running on an ex-Windows 95 machine. It has been running for years, and is functioning as a server for my notes, in a wiki. I just looked at the retail boxes for 8.1 and 9.1. Both are about 3-1/2 inches thick. They have excellent, detailed manuals inside. The box for SuSE 10.1 is under 2 inches thick, with a skimpy manual. That's the last version I bought. Oh, well, I guess I need to switch to online documentation. I now have openSuSE 10.1 and 10.2 on 2 different machines, and just installed 10.3 on another drive in the 10.1 machine. So much for online documentation: It doesn't work in any of the openSuSE 10 series. I'm also finding new and worse problems with their software. K3b (their CD burner) hangs about 25% of the time if I ask it to verify its burn. I then can't even reboot SuSE within KDE. I get a message "Logout canceled by K3b." I have to go to superuser and issue a shutdown command to kill it. On the positive side, SuSE's YaST installer is rock-solid!

 

Now, I'm looking for an alternative. I just spent several hours today installing Ubuntu 7.10 on another partition in the 10.3 drive. The reason it took hours is the Grub installer. Linux is going through a renaming mess. A year or two ago, there were 2 kinds of drives: hd and sd. The sd drives were SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) and the hd's were everything else. More recently, the hd's were renamed pATA (parallel Advanced Technology Attachment), and new sATA (serial ATA) drives were added. For some reason, the Linux gurus decided to use the same "sd" designation for both the SCSI and sATA drives. It shows in the openSuSE evolution. I have a 1-1/2-year-old computer with 2 sATA and 2 pATA drives. SuSE 9.1 called them all hd's. SuSE 10.1 called the pATA drives 'hd', and the sATA drives 'sd'. SuSE 10.3 calls them all 'sd'. To tell them apart, SuSE 10.3 uses the long character-string name of the drive (e.g. scsi-SATA_Maxtor_6L080MO_L269PHVG-part6) instead of /dev/sda6, and Ubuntu uses a 32-byte UUID (Universal Unique IDentifier). The openSuSE folks apparently understand what they are doing (thus YaST's reliable installs), while either Grub or Ubuntu folks do not. Grub uses HD0, HD1, HD2, HD3 to identify the drives. Ubuntu calls them /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, not in the same order! If I did not have the working Grub control files (device.map and menu.lst) from SuSE to analyze, I would have spent a lot longer figuring out how to fix the Grub misconfiguration in Ubuntu. It turns out that the "correct" sequence for Grub is: sda, hda, sdb, hdb. Whether that is unique to my specific hardware, I have no way of knowing.

 

I finally got Ubuntu to boot. I thought I was finished. Nope. It told me my userid/password pair was invalid. I'm positive what I put into the installation fields, so I have no idea why it wouldn't accept it. However, that turned out to be simple to fix (from a security perspective, maybe it is too simple). Just pick the second option in the Grub boot screen (recovery), and it will boot you into text mode as root. Then type passwd <userid>. Ubuntu will reset the password for you. Reboot with shutdown -r 0, and you can log in with the new password. Anyway, after these problems, this leaves me still looking for an alternative to openSuSE.

[FirefoxRocks 0]

Ok I've used Ubuntu for about 6 months now and so far everything has gone well. As for the distribution for my old system, I think I'm gonna give up on that right now because we are currently planning to purchase a new system with Windows Vista (yay user account control!) I might decide to install Ubuntu onto the new system but I may decide not to for the time being.I have started learning more command line stuff and using the terminal more often to do things like install programs and update. 2 things that I still don't know how to do is rename files and copy directory trees (in DOS: ren and xcopy). But I feel that I've learned a lot since I started using Linux, which is a good thing./

[darasen 0]

Ok I've used Ubuntu for about 6 months now and so far everything has gone well. As for the distribution for my old system, I think I'm gonna give up on that right now because we are currently planning to purchase a new system with Windows Vista (yay user account control!) I might decide to install Ubuntu onto the new system but I may decide not to for the time being.
I have started learning more command line stuff and using the terminal more often to do things like install programs and update. 2 things that I still don't know how to do is rename files and copy directory trees (in DOS: ren and xcopy). But I feel that I've learned a lot since I started using Linux, which is a good thing./

Some suggestions for the old machine. 64 MB is not much ram at all as you well know. Luckily you can get older ram really cheap. You could easily up it to 128 mb I am guessing for around $20 or less.

Since you doing nothing with the old box it seems like a great time to really jump into Linux with both feet: Install Slackware. Aside from compiling your own kernel it is probably the the most PC friendly Linux option. Conversely it is one of the less user friendly version of Linux. The install is menu driven not GUI but allows you total control over the install process. It has no package manager by default so you get to learn how to do your own installs. Last I checked it does not launch into a 'desktop' by default. To me the barebones approach to distribution takes is a lot of fun to work with and tweak to my liking. It also is very resource friendly. (Disclaimer: I did know Unix and professionally supported mainframe systems before)

[Miles 0]

I myself use Ubuntu. I have used it for about a month, and I must say that it was easy to install and not too hard to setup. Aside from a little hassle having to type sudo modprobe bcm43xx every time I started my computer (fixed now), my wireless networking mini-pci card, a broadcom one, required no work at the command line. It was simply a matter of downloading two files and running one, and selecting the other within a program. I learnt very quickly how to use the command line with Ubuntu and generally it was a good experiance for me.

[toby 0]

I would suggest DSL, or Ubuntu with a lighter desktop, like XCFE.