[beef]

Hey guys, got a little more involved question for ya.

I'm looking for a good Linxu distro to slap on an old pos computer to use as a home server (and I use server very lightly).

All the machine will need to do is connect to the internet and share that connection over the network (dhcp would be nice too, but not neccesary). I've had it up and going with Ubuntu desktop version ... one less than current... but it died on me and I've been putting off rebuilding it. I'll be off work between Christmas and New Years so I might actually have time to fiddle with it.

Anyone have any suggestions for a distro to use? The machine I'll be putting it on has: amd 350mhz, 128 or 256 ram (I did say it was crappy).

[Nova Dragoon]

I'm running Ubuntu Breezy Badger on my VPS as a virtual client, and was able to get webserver, php, mysql, dns, firewall, and mail all up and configured in like 2 hours.

Try the new ubuntu server edition, it has an install option that will do LAMP automatically, if thats the type of server your needing

[beef]

There are 2 hard drives in my machine and I tried putting the new server edition one of them once but couldn't get it to boot (forgot the error message). I havn't had a chance to try reinstalling it yet, I say that because it took 3 or 4 installs of ubuntu to get it to work. I've noticed that with a couple of distros (ubuntu and fedora come to mind) it's like it doesn't pick everything up while its installing.

This post has been edited by beef: 18 December 2006 - 03:05 PM

[max302]

Red Hat 9 console is really ok. I have that running on a p2 400 mhz netfinity, and it's gooten, runs really smooth. Plus, you shouldn't have compatibility issues with your old hardware.

[Datalus]

If you are a moderately experienced with linux, I would recommend Slackware. Very conservative OS. If you need a decent firewall, you should find a real cheapo box (using 2 network cards), install the IPCop distro on it, and use it as a router.

If I get my materials this Christmas, I hope to put an IPCop tutorial by mid-January.

[rahulbatra]

Without wanting to start a flame war, I think CentOS would also be a pretty decent choice.

[Israel]

Like Datalus said, Slackware could be a viable option. Especially if you consider Slax. It's a smaller more compact version of slackware. (Which means it probably has a better shot at running/running fast on the most modest of hardware) Almost as small as Damn Small Linux, but it has more bells and whistles. There are several versions of Slax on this page. You would probably want the Server Edition for what your aiming at.

[beef]

Thanks guys, I'll take a look at Slax & CentOS and see how things go, I'll probably need help with a few things later though.