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reply pragma <EricAnderton youknowthedrill.yahoo> writes:
Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
separate environment.

To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.

Thanks in advance,
-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo
Aug 22 2005
next sibling parent reply John Reimer <terminal.node gmail.com> writes:
pragma wrote:

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,


Don't go Gentoo.  It's a fun distribution, but it's a royal pain to set 
up and maintain.

I recently tried Fedora 4 after years of Gentoo use, and was very 
impressed at how easy it was to install and manage.  I downloaded the 
DVD iso.  It's a good solid distribution that's very easy to setup.  I'm 
not sure how it would run on a 400 Mhz box, but it may just work fine 
(depending on how much ram you have).  The benefit of useing Fedora is 
that many, many linux project packages are available as Redhat packages 
(*.rpm).  The disadvantage is that you have to find and download a 
compatibility library called libstdc++.so.5 before dmd will run on 
Fedora Core 4 (Fedora uses gcc 4.0 now) .  It's easy enough to find, 
download, and install, though (it's as easy as a click on the package 
link from within fedora core).

Currently I've installed Fedora core 4 inside a Vmware workstation 5 VM. 
  It runs responsively on my AMD64 3000+ client machine, in Windows XP 
Pro.  I keep my Gentoo system on my Laptop.  Between the two of these 
distros, I have very covenient access to linux software development and 
testing.  Vmware is great when you want to be able to develop both win32 
  and linux at the same time.

Another option for running linux from windows is colinux 
(www.colinux.org).  Not an easy solution to set up, but it's free. 
Probably best to stay away from it if you don't want to be horribly 
confused quickly... forget I mentioned it. :-)

-JJR
Aug 22 2005
next sibling parent James Dunne <james.jdunne gmail.com> writes:
In article <dedsmo$1k2g$1 digitaldaemon.com>, John Reimer says...

pragma wrote:

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,


Don't go Gentoo.  It's a fun distribution, but it's a royal pain to set 
up and maintain.

I recently tried Fedora 4 after years of Gentoo use, and was very 
impressed at how easy it was to install and manage.  I downloaded the 
DVD iso.  It's a good solid distribution that's very easy to setup.  I'm 
not sure how it would run on a 400 Mhz box, but it may just work fine 
(depending on how much ram you have).  The benefit of useing Fedora is 
that many, many linux project packages are available as Redhat packages 
(*.rpm).  The disadvantage is that you have to find and download a 
compatibility library called libstdc++.so.5 before dmd will run on 
Fedora Core 4 (Fedora uses gcc 4.0 now) .  It's easy enough to find, 
download, and install, though (it's as easy as a click on the package 
link from within fedora core).

Currently I've installed Fedora core 4 inside a Vmware workstation 5 VM. 
  It runs responsively on my AMD64 3000+ client machine, in Windows XP 
Pro.  I keep my Gentoo system on my Laptop.  Between the two of these 
distros, I have very covenient access to linux software development and 
testing.  Vmware is great when you want to be able to develop both win32 
  and linux at the same time.

Another option for running linux from windows is colinux 
(www.colinux.org).  Not an easy solution to set up, but it's free. 
Probably best to stay away from it if you don't want to be horribly 
confused quickly... forget I mentioned it. :-)

-JJR


I would recommend any Debian-based system.  Don't go with Ubuntu though; it
really sucks.  The GNOME interface is just not usable enough for me.

If you want simple command-line shell linux, then just about any ol' Linux
distro will suffice.  I can get a working, minimal Debian distro up in about a
half-hour, provided I have a sufficient platform to run debootstrap from.

If you want a space on my linux server (running debian), just ask.  I have the D
compiler installed on it as well as the GCC set.

Regards,
James Dunne
Aug 22 2005
prev sibling parent reply Burton Radons <burton-radons smocky.com> writes:
John Reimer wrote:

 Another option for running linux from windows is colinux 
 (www.colinux.org).  Not an easy solution to set up, but it's free. 
 Probably best to stay away from it if you don't want to be horribly 
 confused quickly... forget I mentioned it. :-)


I thought it was really easy and extremely effective.  Download the 
setup program, run it, get it to download Gentoo.  Go to the 
installation directory and unbzip2 the Gentoo image.  Copy the resultant 
image filename to the clipboard, then edit "default.colinux.xml". 
Change the "root_fs" line to point to the image filename, and change the 
swap device line from "enabled="true"" to false.

Now, there are a couple ways to go from here.  I liked to run 
"colinux-daemon -c default.colinux.xml --install-service".  Reboot 
Windows, then go into My Computer/Manage and find the service, open its 
properties, set it to run automatically and then tell it to start.

To open a console to the system, run "colinux-console-fltk.exe" in the 
installation directory.  That's all I have now after a few minutes of 
playing with it - now to figure out how to mount the XP partition in it 
so that I can cross-develop.  Remember that that's all that me and 
Pragma want.
Aug 22 2005
parent John Reimer <terminal.node gmail.com> writes:
Burton Radons wrote:

 John Reimer wrote:
 

 Another option for running linux from windows is colinux 
 (www.colinux.org).  Not an easy solution to set up, but it's free. 
 Probably best to stay away from it if you don't want to be horribly 
 confused quickly... forget I mentioned it. :-)


 
 
 I thought it was really easy and extremely effective.  Download the 
 setup program, run it, get it to download Gentoo.  Go to the 
 installation directory and unbzip2 the Gentoo image.  Copy the resultant 
 image filename to the clipboard, then edit "default.colinux.xml". Change 
 the "root_fs" line to point to the image filename, and change the swap 
 device line from "enabled="true"" to false.
 
 Now, there are a couple ways to go from here.  I liked to run 
 "colinux-daemon -c default.colinux.xml --install-service".  Reboot 
 Windows, then go into My Computer/Manage and find the service, open its 
 properties, set it to run automatically and then tell it to start.
 
 To open a console to the system, run "colinux-console-fltk.exe" in the 
 installation directory.  That's all I have now after a few minutes of 
 playing with it - now to figure out how to mount the XP partition in it 
 so that I can cross-develop.  Remember that that's all that me and 
 Pragma want.


Fine... but not for someone just trying out linux.  I did manage to get 
a full working Gentoo Linux installed after many hours.  Configuration 
is easy for basic level stuff, but there's a lot of digging into barely 
documented features if you need to troubleshoot.  Networking was a huge 
pain for me to get working because the drivers or bridging instructions 
didn't work on my computer.  And from what I read on the wiki sites, 
this is hit and miss for many people.  Also, if you want an XWindow 
system, as pragma probably does for GUI work, you have to go through a 
few more contortions: connecting XMing through sshell on windows.  Sure 
it all works... it's just no walk in the park.

Don't get me wrong, I like colinux.  I just wouldn't recommend it to the 
linux newcomer.  Of course, for people with your and pragma's level of 
technical aptitude, it's probably an acceptible solution.  But not 
everybody will want to be troubleshooting such software.  Most will want 
it to just work out of the box.

-JJR
Aug 23 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron71 yahoo.com> writes:
pragma wrote:

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,


In the past year I've tried both Mepis (http://www.mepis.org/) and 
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/). They are the two most 
user-friendly linux distros I have ever used, though I haven't fooled 
around with Red Hat and other distros in a few years. Mepis was nice, 
but when I upgraded my graphics card recently it crapped out on me. 
Attempts to reinstall resulted in a broken XWindows system. Not being a 
Linux guru, I decided the easiest fix was to try a different distro.

Ubuntu installed with very little input from me. Even getting hardware 
acceleration from my new graphics card was a snap. It also didn't 
install a lot of cruft by default as other distros do. I've been using 
it off an on for a few weeks now and no problems yet.
Aug 22 2005
parent reply John Reimer <terminal.node gmail.com> writes:
Mike Parker wrote:


 
 In the past year I've tried both Mepis (http://www.mepis.org/) and 
 Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/). They are the two most 
 user-friendly linux distros I have ever used, though I haven't fooled 
 around with Red Hat and other distros in a few years. Mepis was nice, 
 but when I upgraded my graphics card recently it crapped out on me. 
 Attempts to reinstall resulted in a broken XWindows system. Not being a 
 Linux guru, I decided the easiest fix was to try a different distro.
 
 Ubuntu installed with very little input from me. Even getting hardware 
 acceleration from my new graphics card was a snap. It also didn't 
 install a lot of cruft by default as other distros do. I've been using 
 it off an on for a few weeks now and no problems yet.


I've heard good things about both Mepis and Ubuntu.  They are supposed 
to be good distributions for beginning linuxers.  I was thinking of 
giving Mepis a whirl sometime.  I've played with linux distributions for 
years.  I've experienced so much frustration (once I would have called 
the experience "fun") over the years with linux, that I'm now a huge 
believer in quick and simple installation.  Gone are the days of 
revelling in the hacker-type mentality of linux.  I've mostly had my 
fill of that. Now, I just want to get the job done.  Whenever I get an 
urge to "hack" again, I just turn to Gentoo Linux until the feeling 
wears off.

-JJR
Aug 22 2005
parent "Charles" <noone nowhere.com> writes:
Now, I just want to get the job done.  Whenever I get an
 urge to "hack" again, I just turn to Gentoo Linux until the feeling
 wears off.


lol, I  know that feeling :).  It was fun once , now its just a pain.
Before gentoo they had NetBSD -- which I still think is l33t :).

Charlie



"John Reimer" <terminal.node gmail.com> wrote in message
news:dee4ns$1t61$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Mike Parker wrote:


 In the past year I've tried both Mepis (http://www.mepis.org/) and
 Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/). They are the two most
 user-friendly linux distros I have ever used, though I haven't fooled
 around with Red Hat and other distros in a few years. Mepis was nice,
 but when I upgraded my graphics card recently it crapped out on me.
 Attempts to reinstall resulted in a broken XWindows system. Not being a
 Linux guru, I decided the easiest fix was to try a different distro.

 Ubuntu installed with very little input from me. Even getting hardware
 acceleration from my new graphics card was a snap. It also didn't
 install a lot of cruft by default as other distros do. I've been using
 it off an on for a few weeks now and no problems yet.


 I've heard good things about both Mepis and Ubuntu.  They are supposed
 to be good distributions for beginning linuxers.  I was thinking of
 giving Mepis a whirl sometime.  I've played with linux distributions for
 years.  I've experienced so much frustration (once I would have called
 the experience "fun") over the years with linux, that I'm now a huge
 believer in quick and simple installation.  Gone are the days of
 revelling in the hacker-type mentality of linux.  I've mostly had my
 fill of that. Now, I just want to get the job done.  Whenever I get an
 urge to "hack" again, I just turn to Gentoo Linux until the feeling
 wears off.

 -JJR
Aug 23 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply AJG <AJG nospam.com> writes:
pragma wrote:

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,


If you want to skip the whole "installation" thing, I recommend Knoppix.

Free, easy, very quick. No-fuss at all.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Server-side I use Debian, but that's just because it's what the servers 
run. At the same time, I can't complain, since it's a pretty decent 
distro. Rock solid (no crashes yet), and it has a very nice package system.

Of course, some people swear by Red Hat. Incidentally, that's what we 
run in school (Fedora Core 2). However, I can't vouch for its stability. 
Suffice to say, it's left me with several hung workstations.

Cheers,
--AJG.
Aug 22 2005
next sibling parent reply John Reimer <terminal.node gmail.com> writes:
AJG wrote:

 pragma wrote:
 

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.

 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking 
 for something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all 
 week, when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI 
 or two.

 Thanks in advance,


 
 
 If you want to skip the whole "installation" thing, I recommend Knoppix.
 
 Free, easy, very quick. No-fuss at all.
 
 http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
 
 Server-side I use Debian, but that's just because it's what the servers 
 run. At the same time, I can't complain, since it's a pretty decent 
 distro. Rock solid (no crashes yet), and it has a very nice package system.
 
 Of course, some people swear by Red Hat. Incidentally, that's what we 
 run in school (Fedora Core 2). However, I can't vouch for its stability. 
 Suffice to say, it's left me with several hung workstations.
 
 Cheers,
 --AJG.
 


Knoppix is mostly for LIVE system use only (IE boot from a CD), no? 
While fun, I've never quite understood the long term usefulness of such 
systems, other than for specialized uses such as DVD playback, testing 
new software, emulation (ATARI GEM), system diagnostics, etc).  That 
said, Knoppix is a fun distribution to play with and very easy to use, 
but I'm curious to know how one uses it for long term software development.

Fedora Core 2 is two major releases old.  I wouldn't expect it to be 
stable.  Try version 4.

-JJR
Aug 22 2005
parent AJG <AJG nospam.com> writes:
Hi,

John Reimer wrote:

 AJG wrote:
 

 pragma wrote:


 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.

 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux 
 or BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm 
 looking for something that is going to keep me from playing around in 
 /etc all week, when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw 
 around a GUI or two.

 Thanks in advance,




 If you want to skip the whole "installation" thing, I recommend Knoppix.

 Free, easy, very quick. No-fuss at all.

 http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

 Server-side I use Debian, but that's just because it's what the 
 servers run. At the same time, I can't complain, since it's a pretty 
 decent distro. Rock solid (no crashes yet), and it has a very nice 
 package system.

 Of course, some people swear by Red Hat. Incidentally, that's what we 
 run in school (Fedora Core 2). However, I can't vouch for its 
 stability. Suffice to say, it's left me with several hung workstations.

 Cheers,
 --AJG.


 
 Knoppix is mostly for LIVE system use only (IE boot from a CD), no? 
 While fun, I've never quite understood the long term usefulness of such 
 systems, other than for specialized uses such as DVD playback, testing 
 new software, emulation (ATARI GEM), system diagnostics, etc).  That 
 said, Knoppix is a fun distribution to play with and very easy to use, 
 but I'm curious to know how one uses it for long term software development.


It's primary benefits are:

1) Minimize fuss. Up and running very quickly.
2) Minimize impact. If the OP's franken-box is already running some OS, 
then he's looking at multibooting, which is arguably not fun.
3) Good for testing. To see if you can even RUN linux in the first 
place, without tearing down your system in the process.

I'm not sure if it's intended for long-term uses. I think the idea is 
that once you are ready, you can move on to other distros, or just move 
the install to HD. I find it very convenient in general, though.


 Fedora Core 2 is two major releases old.  I wouldn't expect it to be 
 stable.  Try version 4.


Would if I could, but I ain't the sysadmin. At any rate, a release 
should be stable in its own right. Even w2k is stable, and it's ancient.


 
 -JJR


Cheers,
--AJG.
Aug 22 2005
prev sibling parent "Charles" <noone nowhere.com> writes:
Knoppix rules.

"AJG" <AJG nospam.com> wrote in message
news:dedvh6$1n80$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 pragma wrote:

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a
 separate environment.

 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week,
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.

 Thanks in advance,


 If you want to skip the whole "installation" thing, I recommend Knoppix.

 Free, easy, very quick. No-fuss at all.

 http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

 Server-side I use Debian, but that's just because it's what the servers
 run. At the same time, I can't complain, since it's a pretty decent
 distro. Rock solid (no crashes yet), and it has a very nice package


system.

 Of course, some people swear by Red Hat. Incidentally, that's what we
 run in school (Fedora Core 2). However, I can't vouch for its stability.
 Suffice to say, it's left me with several hung workstations.

 Cheers,
 --AJG.
Aug 23 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
pragma wrote:

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,


I've been trying to play with linux recently, because .. well, just for 
the heck of it. So maybe I can help you.

I heared Suse and Mandriva (aka Mandrake) are the best for n00bs (coming 
from a Windows background), but one instructor at my university 
recommended fedora for us.

I tried Fedora 3, it's horroble, it didn't detect my video card and 
didn't connect to the internet out of the box (even though the drivers 
for the network card were installed!!)
I struggeled with fedora for a long time .. my advice: don't bother with 
it, you'll be playing around with /etc and everything else for months on 
no end.

Then I tried SUSE, and man, what a reliefe! I didn't believe this was a 
"linux", it recognized everything out of the box, and the Yast tool is 
amazing. One drawback (but negligable): for some legal reasons, there 
are certain things that the Installer will not install right away (with 
the system), you'll have to download them after the OS setup is finished.

Here's where to download it (don't try googling "download suse", not 
very good results).
http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Download
Aug 22 2005
parent John Reimer <terminal.node gmail.com> writes:
Hasan Aljudy wrote:

 pragma wrote:
 

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.

 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking 
 for something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all 
 week, when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI 
 or two.

 Thanks in advance,


 
 
 I've been trying to play with linux recently, because .. well, just for 
 the heck of it. So maybe I can help you.
 
 I heared Suse and Mandriva (aka Mandrake) are the best for n00bs (coming 
 from a Windows background), but one instructor at my university 
 recommended fedora for us.
 
 I tried Fedora 3, it's horroble, it didn't detect my video card and 
 didn't connect to the internet out of the box (even though the drivers 
 for the network card were installed!!)
 I struggeled with fedora for a long time .. my advice: don't bother with 
 it, you'll be playing around with /etc and everything else for months on 
 no end.
 
 Then I tried SUSE, and man, what a reliefe! I didn't believe this was a 
 "linux", it recognized everything out of the box, and the Yast tool is 
 amazing. One drawback (but negligable): for some legal reasons, there 
 are certain things that the Installer will not install right away (with 
 the system), you'll have to download them after the OS setup is finished.
 
 Here's where to download it (don't try googling "download suse", not 
 very good results).
 http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Download



Fedora has been a "beta" type distribution for some time.  I had no 
trouble at all with fedora core 4, but I admit that installing it within 
a vmware workstation vm probably circumvented most potential 
compatibility problems.  I can't say I've got experience installing it 
on a real computer yet.  I can say that it has an extremely clean and 
simple installation process and a non-obtrusive administration setup.  I 
started with a redhat distribution many years ago, and didn't care for 
it much.  The improvement these days with Fedora is substantial.  But 
that anaylsis probably could apply to most distributions.

I've heard good things about SUSE and Debian distributions.  Debian is 
probably one of the most practical: ie, get-the-job-done sort with the 
minimun of trouble and minimum of candy.

-JJR
Aug 22 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent clayasaurus <clayasaurus gmail.com> writes:
pragma wrote:

 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,


Ubuntu has the most documentation and is fairly user friendly, you can 
search though the wiki's at ubuntulinux.org or post on their forums if 
you have any problems. If you don't like Gnome, then there is 
Kubuntu.org, which is Ubuntu with KDE. There is also www.ubuntuguide.org 
to help you out.

Mepis is very user friendly as well. (www.mepis.org)

Both these are debian based distro's, and you can use Synaptic (or 
similar) to search for the programs you want and download them without 
fussing with any web sites.
Aug 22 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent Lars Ivar Igesund <larsivar igesund.net> writes:
pragma wrote:


 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week,
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,


Since many don't like the Gnome of Ubuntu, there exist a Kubuntu with KDE,
although I'm not sure either of them is the best for that particular box,
although it is possible to turn off much of the glitter.

Open Suse (beta 2 now) seems to get lots of nice previews, I would have
tried it myself (www.opensuse.org, btw) if I hadn't been sworn to Gentoo ;)

Lars Ivar Igesund
Aug 23 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Walter" <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:
"pragma" <EricAnderton youknowthedrill.yahoo> wrote in message
news:dedo57$1af2$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week,
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.


I'm using Red Hat 9.

I still can't get Windows XP to recognize it by name on my local network,
though. I ftp to/from it using the 198.... number, which changes every time
the power cycles. Oh well.
Aug 23 2005
parent reply MicroWizard <MicroWizard_member pathlink.com> writes:
Do you mean: is Samba package installed on Linux,
are the same workgroup names setup and
after these things XP can't connect?

Other thing:
It's much smoother to use fix IP addresses on all local machines.
For last chance you always can use WinSCP (filecopy over SSH)
to transfer files and it will remember last IP addresses.

Tamás Nagy
tamas microwizard.hu


I'm using Red Hat 9.

I still can't get Windows XP to recognize it by name on my local network,
though. I ftp to/from it using the 198.... number, which changes every time
the power cycles. Oh well.
Aug 23 2005
parent reply "Walter" <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:
"MicroWizard" <MicroWizard_member pathlink.com> wrote in message
news:defguu$18bu$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Do you mean: is Samba package installed on Linux,
 are the same workgroup names setup and
 after these things XP can't connect?


I poked around with Samba for an hour or so last year and gave up.


 Other thing:
 It's much smoother to use fix IP addresses on all local machines.


How do you do that?
Aug 23 2005
next sibling parent "Uwe Salomon" <post uwesalomon.de> writes:
 I poked around with Samba for an hour or so last year and gave up.


Well, i use Fedora, have used SuSE before, and with both distros using  
Samba was almost plug&play... Very useful, by the way, as i have all my  
data in my linux home directory, and from the Windows machines i only  
access it.

Ciao
uwe
Aug 23 2005
prev sibling parent reply Dejan Lekic <leka entropy.tmok.com> writes:
 How do you do that?


It really depends on your LAN configuration... So first You need to explain
how are Your computers connected in LAN. Most likely they already have
fixed IPs except one perhaps - one which is connected to the Net. Another
scenario is that ALL of them have dynamic IPs, given by your
router/firewall, etc.

-- 
...........
Dejan Lekic
  http://dejan.lekic.org
Aug 24 2005
parent "Walter" <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:
"Dejan Lekic" <leka entropy.tmok.com> wrote in message
news:deh7vu$1g64$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 How do you do that?


 It really depends on your LAN configuration... So first You need to


explain

 how are Your computers connected in LAN. Most likely they already have
 fixed IPs except one perhaps - one which is connected to the Net. Another
 scenario is that ALL of them have dynamic IPs, given by your
 router/firewall, etc.


I'm using a netgear router which dynamically assigns the addresses.
Aug 24 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent John Demme <me teqdruid.com> writes:
I recommend Ubuntu to everyone who wants to come over from windows, but I
don't know how well it'll run on a 400mhz computer.  If it doesn't run too
well, you might want to try running the machine headless, that is, without
X running, and don't even connect a monitor.  For command line
programming, ssh into it, with X forwarding for GUIs.  For these
purposes, slackware isn't a horrible choice.  It's complicated for more
advanced things, but if you just want a vanilla box to ssh into, it's not
a bad idea.

-John Demme

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:45:33 -0700, pragma wrote:


 Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
 finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
 separate environment.
 
 To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
 BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
 something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
 when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.
 
 Thanks in advance,
Aug 23 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent pragma <pragma_member pathlink.com> writes:
I just want to thank everybody for all the responses about what distro to use.
It looks like I'll have a lot to think about!  All-in-all, it looks like that
things have improved greatly since I last had a go at this about 5 years ago.

I'm going to be offline a lot in the upcoming weeks, (Business travel *and*
moving... all back to back) but after that I'll probably be hard at work
reformatting that old box.


- EricAnderton at yahoo
Aug 23 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Sean Kelly <sean f4.ca> writes:
In article <dedo57$1af2$1 digitaldaemon.com>, pragma says...

Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
separate environment.

To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.


SuSE seems to be pretty user-friendly, though I'm not sure if it's available as
a free download.  I've used Redhat and Mandrake before, and both are pretty nice
all things considered.  I preferred Redhat because it was a little bit more
server-oriented (Alan Cox is on staff at Redhat IIRC).  My biggest complaint
about Linux these days is that most distros want to install gigs of junk on your
PC along with the OS, so you're forced to do a custom install if you just want a
minimal environment.  FreeBSD is a fantastic alternative if you're willing to
deal with a no-frills system.  BSD is really a server OS, but if you're just
test compiling then it may be preferable (though that would also mean using GDC
instead of DMD).


Sean
Aug 23 2005
parent Lars Ivar Igesund <larsivar igesund.net> writes:
Sean Kelly wrote:


 In article <dedo57$1af2$1 digitaldaemon.com>, pragma says...

Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm
finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a
separate environment.

To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or
BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for
something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week,
when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.


 
 SuSE seems to be pretty user-friendly, though I'm not sure if it's
 available as
 a free download.  I've used Redhat and Mandrake before, and both are
 pretty nice
 all things considered.  I preferred Redhat because it was a little bit
 more
 server-oriented (Alan Cox is on staff at Redhat IIRC).  My biggest
 complaint about Linux these days is that most distros want to install gigs
 of junk on your PC along with the OS, so you're forced to do a custom
 install if you just want a
 minimal environment.  FreeBSD is a fantastic alternative if you're willing
 to
 deal with a no-frills system.  BSD is really a server OS, but if you're
 just test compiling then it may be preferable (though that would also mean
 using GDC instead of DMD).
 
 
 Sean


Suse did previously come in a free release for the next-to-last version. Now
all this is separated into the Open Suse project, which is as free as the
rest out there.

As for a fairly gunkless distribution, i'd recommend Kubuntu/Ubuntu, as it
only installs one app within each category, and then only mostly
officerelated stuff. There are too many services though, IMO, but that's
probably to take care of as much hardwaresupport as possible, since it is
very good at it.

Lars Ivar Igesund
Aug 24 2005
prev sibling parent rhaper houston.rr.com writes:
In article <dedo57$1af2$1 digitaldaemon.com>, pragma says...

Until recently, I never had the need to work under Linux.  Now I'm 
finding that in order to make sure my code ports correctly, I need a 
separate environment.

To that end, I ask of the D community: what is a good no-fuss Linux or 
BSD distro that I can run on my old 400Mhz franken-box?  I'm looking for 
something that is going to keep me from playing around in /etc all week, 
when all I want to do is test code and maybe throw around a GUI or two.

Thanks in advance,
-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo



Given your hardware constraints, I suggest that you take a good look at
VectorLinux (http://www.vectorlinux.com/).  It's a slimmed down but
full-featured version of Slackware and runs very well on older systems with
limited resources.  You can run the full-blown GNOME or KDE desktops but I
suggest the lighter weight Xfce desktop.  VectorLinux 5.1 has just been
released.  I think you will find VectorLinux strikes a good balance between
resource demands and features and a good fit for your hardware and your
application development requirements.

---
Rod
Aug 24 2005