Picking up the Slack

[tRoG]

I'm thinking of buying/building a dedicated linux box (Specifically, slackware.) to help nurture my knowledge of the OS, and hopefully learn C on. But, as always, I'm having trouble

Can any of you suggest a min. spec that I should have, just to be able to comfortably play around with the OS, and have lots of eyecandy turned on?

I'll basicly be trying to make things looks sexeh, chat on irc, browse the web, learn and compile me some C, and write up some reports. I wouldn't imagine that this would require anything magnificent, but I have no idea, being the rather Win/Mac orientated newbie that I am

The winner of the "Spec me up, Twoggie!" competition gets a pat on the back and some positive feedback

 

[MrBlack]

Spec-wise.. you can run an up to date linux on practically anything. Pick up a second hand PC, cheap as you like, but with a reasonably well supported 2d video card. (Any recent Matrox or nvidia, but not cutting edge, driver development is a bit behind the times for the most recent cards.)

You could go for a faster CPU box, which will help bring down kernel re-compile times (should you be bothered) but other than that, linux will run on anything. A decent sized HD will help, if only for noise reduction purposes.

I'm running a fully featured debian firewall/router/server/X-windows box on a P300/128MB/40GB/Riva 128 and the load barely breaks a sweat


Depending on your current level of linux ability, you might want to give knoppix a go:
http://www.knoppix.org/

It lets you donwload a bootable live linux system, striahgt off the CD. It auto-detects practically any hardware that's supported and usually boots into a nice high-res KDE desktop. (all the bells and whistles and spangly bits you could ask for)
If you're happy with that, you can install it to your HD, just like most distros.

Knoppix is based on debian, though, so if you know your slackware, you might find things a little disorienting. But it's brilliant if you want to just get started and skip all the evil configuring nastyness. It also comes with OpenOffice, I think, and nice browsers and irc clients. There's also Debian's package manager for anything the base install doesn't have.

HTH,

MrB.

 

[tRoG]

I've had a wee bit of slackware experience with my old laptop (Which the the work recently took off me ), and I'm keen to 'jump in at the deep end', as it were, because slack. seems to be toted as the most "linux like linux distro", so I figure that whatever I learn will be transferrable across the board.

Thanks for the help MrBlack, looks like I'll be going down the eBay route

 

[TdC]

indeed, the OS will run on next to anything. I advise an as-fast-as-your-budget-can-tolerate cpu though, for compiles and eyekandi. also I can recommend matrox (don't say ugh!) gfx cards because they run very well and render crisp 2d (for those late night coding sessions)

 

[MrBlack]

indeed, the OS will run on next to anything. I advise an as-fast-as-your-budget-can-tolerate cpu though, for compiles and eyekandi. also I can recommend matrox (don't say ugh!) gfx cards because they run very well and render crisp 2d (for those late night coding sessions)

Yep. the G200 has been around for 4 years now (ish?) and is still a brilliant 2d card and has solid linux support.

Also, hardware-wise, you could use this as an excuse to upgrade your windows box (if you have one) and convert the old one to linux.

I haven't used slackware since 1998, it's probably changed a little since then. I've done a lot of server work with RedHat, and poked about with SuSE. I use Debian now for server stuff, and the knoppix recommendation still stands if you're looking for linux like configuration, since it's debian-based and debian is a totally non-profit collective of enthusiasts, so you won't find the kernel heavily butchered in the way the heavyweights like SuSE and RedHat do.

Slackware, too, from what I'm told, still resembles linux-like linux. This does mean that it doesn't hide a lot of install options from you to start with, so you might find it daunting for a first real stab at the OS.

 

[MrBlack]

Stupidly, I forgot to mention your other option:

Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com) is probably one of the most useful tools I've ever used.

It's essentially a fully featured linux distro, that runs in a window on your windows desktop. It comes with a full suite of development tools; bash; network tools; and even command-line cd-burning tools. and even a very basic X-windows implementation, so you can have an X-server running and run KDE or whatever from another linux box to display in it. Ok, you don't have another linux box, but regardless of whatever else you do, it's still a brilliantly useful piece of software. You'll never go back to the command prompt again.

 

[tRoG]

Well, just bought an old IBM thing off eBay for £50, including a monitor.

Here's hoping it'll arrive sometime next week.