View Full Version : Low needs OS
Well, I have finnaly got my server set up.
800Mhz
128mb
6GB HDD
1.6GB HDD
^ yes, I realize very very slow but, it'll work :beer:
Well anyways, I guess I need sort of a low needs OS, that won't have me running at 100% constantly...
Here's what I have now....
Win XP 6in1 CORP
Win 2000 / server
win 98
Redhat Linux 6.2
I can always get another cd of something if I need to. ;)
Suggestions???
thideras
07-17-07, 12:57 PM
What are you going to be doing on it?
I have about the same specs for my server (800 celly PIII) and I've run Fedora Core 6/7, Ubuntu and smoothwall.
But again, it comes down to what you want it to do...:beer:
hehe, ima using a p3 also ;)
Basically, small servers for games... hence the word small, lol. :beer:
i'd go with NetBSD or FreeBSD based on those specs and if it is used as a general "server".
but yeah, what exactly do you plan on doing with this box?
edit: yeah i'd go with NetBSD/FreeBSD. If you want linux, i'd go debian probably.
Uhhh, ya.. you gave me tooo many choices..
Well, basically, I need something a little graphical, so I can at least navigate my way around without having to command line everything.
This rig will basically be on 24/7 host dedicated servers for games like BF1942.
Uhh, and thats about... all it will be doing. No actual gaming, no photos, nothing else, just running the dedicated server, until it goes up in smoke :beer:
Xenocide
07-17-07, 01:32 PM
800mhz dedicated server for bf1942? with 128mb of ram.....your crazy
uh, it might support...1 player..maybe 2?
I would go with linux, maybe vector, or xubuntu if you need a gui.
thideras
07-17-07, 01:34 PM
800mhz dedicated server for bf1942? with 128mb of ram.....your crazy
uh, it might support...1 player..maybe 2?
I would go with linux, maybe vector, or xubuntu if you need a gui.Dedicated servers don't take that much do they? You could try it...but I wouldn't try it with 30 or so people though. :beer:
800mhz dedicated server for bf1942? with 128mb of ram.....your crazy
uh, it might support...1 player..maybe 2?
I would go with linux, maybe vector, or xubuntu if you need a gui.
I'm not just crazy, I'm overclocker crazy!
It also takes 500mhz and 128mb RAM, lol. It says so on the package, for drop dead extreme lag performance ;)
what about my redhat linux 6.2?
I know I can do that, lol
Red Hat Linux 6.2:
*
Processor — Any x86 processor (minimum required); Intel Pentium or AMD-K6 (minimum recommended).
*
RAM — 16 MB RAM (minimum required); 32 MB RAM (minimum recommended).
*
Hard Drive Free Space — 500 MB (minimum required); 1.2 GB (minimum required for Workstation-class installation with GNOME and KDE; 700 MB with only one); 1.7 GB (minimum required for Server-class installation); 1.7 GB (minimum required for Custom-class installation if every package is selected); 2 GB (minimum recommended to allow space for updates and additional software).
i think you will regret trying to run a gui on a game server, especially with so little resources. Also, I'd bet money that the bf1942 server software has no gui components to it, it's all going to be controlled through command line, so there will be absolutely no need for a gui. and theres no need for a monitor to be connected to the box anyway, you can just use ssh to connect over the network and do all your tasks using the ssh command line. I ran a cs server for a few years in college using my old p2 400mhz, 128mb ram machine. As with any server, you do not want to use up any resources that you don't need, so you do not want to load a gui. Trust me, it will be better in the end.
I'd go with FreeBSD, it is my favorite straight-up server OS. That is what I used to run my CS server.
i think you will regret trying to run a gui on a game server, especially with so little resources. Also, I'd bet money that the bf1942 server software has no gui components to it, it's all going to be controlled through command line, so there will be absolutely no need for a gui. and theres no need for a monitor to be connected to the box anyway, you can just use ssh to connect over the network and do all your tasks using the ssh command line. I ran a cs server for a few years in college using my old p2 400mhz, 128mb ram machine. As with any server, you do not want to use up any resources that you don't need, so you do not want to load a gui. Trust me, it will be better in the end.
I'd go with FreeBSD, it is my favorite straight-up server OS. That is what I used to run my CS server.
I totally agree with splat. running a gui is a total waste and if you are just running a game server I'm sure ti will also just be all command line. I mean for that your box can be so empty, no keyboard/mouse/videocard/CD drive (after initial install). That is actually good cause it will save you on power.
The only thing I would change is I probably wouldn't use FreeBSD because I don't have any experience with it and would probably end up using debian. Not quite sure why you would use red hat since you have to pay for that. Doesn't totally make sense to me.
splat,
You make sense so, I guess i'll go with FreeBSD. If I have probs, I'm coming to you, lol. ;)
TalRW,
"Not quite sure why you would use red hat since you have to pay for that. Doesn't totally make sense to me."
Well, I have the Redhats, my uncle used to work at a server place, in Tennessee. So he got a LOT of computer stuff. (He my main OS provider) :beer:
Also, Splat, uh, theres like 7 FreeBSDs, which one? lol
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.2/
6.2-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso is what you want. That will let you do a "net install" where it grabs what it needs as it needs it. Once you are in the install program, i think it will ask you what type of system you will be running and it will choose a standard base of programs to fit that profile, so you should choose something like a "command line developer" where it will install a compiler and documentation. Follow the handbook, it is very knowledgeable: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ and make sure you instal linux compatibility
do not install X, you do not need to waste drive space with gui stuff. Then you will probably want to search google for a "bf1942 freebsd howto" of some sort, which will tell you how to install and run the server software.
edit: also, i believe red hat was free up till RH9, where it split in to fedora and RHEL, fedora being free and RHEL being non-free. So, if you have Red Hat 6.2, i think that is sorely out of date.
BSD all the way. Nothing runs as well on old crappy hardware as BSD.
However, it's not the easiest to set up / configure. It's not user friendly like ubuntu or mepis or a lot of the newer linux distros. However, I've seen the newest BSD distros run with a memory footprint of 5 mb. (no gui)
illuminati11_13
07-17-07, 02:20 PM
There's only one FreeBSD (http://www.freebsd.org/).
DesktopBSD and PCBSD are merely FreeBSD distros with more GUI tools and simplified installers.
OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFlyBSD are separate OS's.
I would go with straight FreeBSD if I were to go that route. Considering your hardware and intended purpose it seems to make the most sense.
Also, build your own kernel and strip it of unneeded crap. It will really cut down on the memory requirements.
Also, build your own kernel and strip it of unneeded crap. It will really cut down on the memory requirements.
baby steps, MRD...baby steps.
Yep, I'm stuck.... I get to the part where I download the rest, and I always end up with not enough space. first time I told it to use the whole ~5GB HDD. The second time I tried partitioning 1GB. nope. I get so far, and it stops saying I have -1bytes left.
thoughts?
baby steps, MRD...baby steps.
Actually, a kernel config is part of the basic installation for freebsd I think...
OkydOky
07-17-07, 04:53 PM
baby steps, MRD...baby steps.
Some babies have big legs?
Not all though so yea.... not many at all... may be lil' too much for 1st install :)
w000 I figured it out. Now im just waiting for the linux package thing. :)
jrafael
07-17-07, 05:13 PM
From FreeBSD wiki, Setting up a Dedicated Battlefield 1942 Server:
http://www.section6.net/wiki/index.php/Setting_up_a_Dedicated_Battlefield_1942_Server
Oh yea... totally lost now, hehe...
I didn't put in a password for my account, and uhhh, ya.... It won't let me in. Login Failed.
I can get into "root" at least... from there, I really don't know, lol.
Also, how in the world am i supposed to download the files and put it on the machine??????
Okay, I got the password thing setup, or shall I say
passwd <username>
Now, how do I get the server files onto the machine???
A thought sprang into my mind, would I be able to transfer the files by using a thumb drive???
illuminati11_13
07-17-07, 07:15 PM
Depends on the filesystem of the thumbdrive. If it's fat32, should be no problem. NTFS or U3 based drives might be difficulty.
You'll have to type:mount /dev/"devicename" /mnt/"devicename"
I used to run Gentoo on an old 800 celeron and I used it as a media machine. It played pretty much anything I threw at it /w an ATI 8500. Kinda choked on most HD content so I upgraded it to a 2.8ghz P4. I think the memory blew out on it also I dont remember needless to say I threw it out.
It had a 10gig HDD and a gigabit Ethernet card and it played everything over the network. For its GUI I used fluxbox and it was using ~35-40megs of ram when everything was booted up (X, Fluxbox, ProFTPd, Samba, Cups, Distcc, nfs, stunnel, webmin, mplayer; I think thats most of what it ran).
In a low memory situation kernel modules are your friend :D. Load any module you need then unload it when your done. :santa:
Used Distcc to cross compile everything for it because compiling on an 800 Celeron is not that fun. It ran pretty well, actually better than what I thought it would. I can't imagine living without "emerge."
The_Jizzler
07-17-07, 08:27 PM
surprised noones recommended webmin (http://www.webmin.com/). sounds just teh ticket for this guys server.
I said I use to run webmin on my old server in the above post :D Unless you were referring to my post
It is very good, and has lot of addon modules. I run it pretty much on every linux computer.
You can't run gentoo on a 1.6 gb hd. Portage takes more space than that.
Recursion
07-17-07, 10:11 PM
as with any system, BSD for the win.
Okay, I got the password thing setup, or shall I say
passwd <username>
Now, how do I get the server files onto the machine???
A thought sprang into my mind, would I be able to transfer the files by using a thumb drive???
cdrom, using samba to access a MS shared folder, ftp, wget, sftp, scp, thumb drive, http...
tons of options. where are the files now?
A thought sprang into my mind, would I be able to transfer the files by using a thumb drive???
Just avoid non-standard filesystems like ntfs and you'll have full compatibility with linux.
cdrom, using samba to access a MS shared folder, ftp, wget, sftp, scp, thumb drive, http...
tons of options. where are the files now?
Well, the're on my thumb drive, but I have to use my 5GB HDD to use it, because I used my first 1.6GB HDD to put FreeBSD on it. (I think I just made things more complicated...)
THOUGHT!
If I hook up both HDD's to my dads comp, He has two extra IDE slots. So from there, I could copy the files onto the 5GB HDD and it would hopefully all fit...
^ I can do that... right??
i'm confused. is this a zip file or similar on the thumb drive? or an extracted folder or something?
if this is anything like HLDS (half life), then you are probably going to need to copy the extracted directory to something like /usr/compat/linux/usr/share (read that HOWTO that was linked to in an earlier post, i haven't so i might be way off). but iirc, everything under /usr/compat/linux is basically a linux system on the surface.
Captain Newbie
07-18-07, 11:20 PM
i'd go with NetBSD or FreeBSD based on those specs and if it is used as a general "server".
but yeah, what exactly do you plan on doing with this box?
edit: yeah i'd go with NetBSD/FreeBSD. If you want linux, i'd go debian probably.
debian or Ubuntu server (they are really the same thing) should be fairly low maintenance.
Umm, I just upgrade it up a bit... LOT
Giga Pro 1500+ (I think it 800mhz) anyone know what it is????
1GB RAM
30GB HDD
Much better then before, yes?
Oh yea, and by the way, I think I am going with xubuntu OR RedHat Linux 6.2
(FreeBSD didn't like me too much :bang head )
Debian or Ubuntu server. They are basically the same. Still, do not install X11, you don't need the overhead on a server when you are going to be doing everything by command line anyway.
Uh, tried xubuntu.. didnt like my monitor or something.. Signal out of range message would fly around on the monitor when I would try to install.
SO then I tred KDE Red hat linux 6.2
In which now I have 01 flying across the screen EVERYWHERE!!
It's been doing that for about... 10min now... Hopefully it will stop...
(same thing happened when I did the server version)
red hat 6.2 is severely out of date, if that is original "red hat" and not RHEL ( i have no idea what rhel version they're up to). use debian. do a "server" install, do not install teh GUI....again...do not install the gui.
asusradeon
07-21-07, 03:52 AM
i would go for debian just CLI, get the net install cd, its only about 150mb and you can install most of what you need from that, it might have to connect to the net for server packages but thats about it for a non GUI system of your neeeds..
I changed my mind!!!!
I am NOT doing Linux.
It just KILLED MY HARD DRIVE!!!!
IT's unaccessable.... took me a few hours to get it again... a few hours of formating....
I tried linux on my rig, to try it out, (a good version of linux)
umm, ALSO killed my Hard drive so I had to wait for even MORE hours for the the format... lost ALL of my precious data and things like that....
So, No More Linux for me!
(Although I will probably try it again in a few weeks.... days ;) )
I changed my mind!!!!
I am NOT doing Linux.
It just KILLED MY HARD DRIVE!!!!
IT's unaccessable.... took me a few hours to get it again... a few hours of formating....
I tried linux on my rig, to try it out, (a good version of linux)
umm, ALSO killed my Hard drive so I had to wait for even MORE hours for the the format... lost ALL of my precious data and things like that....
So, No More Linux for me!
(Although I will probably try it again in a few weeks.... days ;) )
You could format the drive? So it's not dead after all?
Listen, before trying stuff like this you should expect **** to happen, and obviously backup your data. We humans tend to do stupid things, simply becuase of ignorance.. That's fine and teaches us, so next time we can do other stupid things. ;)
I really hope you know what the problem was.. because otherwise you may expect the same thing to happen next time.
smokie mcpott
07-22-07, 04:35 PM
i had to LOL on this one
the harddrive isnt accessible THROUGH windows after installing linux on it
on the spare computer, install linux and be done with it...configure at your leisure. as far as 'a good version of linux' they all pretty much do the same thing, so i dont know that you got 'a bad version of linux', you just didnt understand what you were doing. research, read, understand....otherwise you will simply give up on linux and go back to the darkside
You could format the drive? So it's not dead after all?
Listen, before trying stuff like this you should expect **** to happen, and obviously backup your data. We humans tend to do stupid things, simply becuase of ignorance.. That's fine and teaches us, so next time we can do other stupid things. ;)
I really hope you know what the problem was.. because otherwise you may expect the same thing to happen next time.
Some humans do more stupid things then others :D
But uhh, I think I got the problem pretty worked out. I don't think I partitioned right.... at all ;)
i had to LOL on this one
the harddrive isnt accessible THROUGH windows after installing linux on it
on the spare computer, install linux and be done with it...configure at your leisure. as far as 'a good version of linux' they all pretty much do the same thing, so i dont know that you got 'a bad version of linux', you just didnt understand what you were doing. research, read, understand....otherwise you will simply give up on linux and go back to the darkside
Ya... all I know is windows right now hehe.... by the way, I was trying to do Gentoo linux, for a dual for my good rig in my sig... which needs a better grapics card.... Well, this time I was smart, I made a backup of my fresh install with almost all drivers... forgot my sound.... So, it's good. I also made.. I think... a 50.2GB partition that I was going to use for Gentoo... So, I think I can get it to work this time :D But as always.. my work keeps me from home for a week, so... grrr... but I have tuesday off :D
just for future reference, if you want us to help you'll need to be more specific with your problem and what steps led up to the problem...more than just "Dude, my disk is dead"
If you're a complete linux noob and have no idea how to partition, format, or do even basic aspects of a manual gentoo installation, you really shouldn't do anything to a production disk w/o backing up first. It's not hard to imagine data being lost. I don't bother to backup data in these cases, but I actually understand everything I'm doing and I'm confident I won't hurt stuff. If you feel lost, you don't back up, and you go ahead and start partitioning and formatting, and then experience data loss... well, not a lot of sympathy here. =P
Maybe try a practice install on an old/small junk disk first to learn it, or take the time to read and learn about how the stuff works. Ask specific questions and we'll be glad to help if we can.
Partitioning and formatting are operations that can potentially lead to massive data loss. Take them seriously, especially if the data is important.
Personally, I keep important data on the file server, so it doesn't really matter much if a comp crashes and I need to reformat/reinstall. I have a few more files to move over, but almost everything is over there. I'm in the process now of mirroring my home directory to a small disk in the file server now too, so that will be redundant (not going to mirror the whole file server, it's too big, just the docs and stuff like that). I think I'll probably use rsync on a cron job.
Okay well, I'm ready to try Gentoo again :D For my good Rig in my sig. I got angry at the low needs system, hehe... (don't ask)
But, ok, I made a partition as I said before, thats 50.2GB. So, Now, I can work inside of that, right?
ALSO, what things would I need, you know, like the /, /usr, /tmp is that it?? Can you recommend a size for each?
You need at least two partitions, one for swap, and one for /. Many other people use a /boot. These are separate partitions. My suggestion is that you not make separate partitions for /usr, /var, /bin, /opt, /tmp, etc. It's not necessary and just screws stuff up later. If you want you can make one for /home. So at most, have 4 partitions, /, /home, /boot, and swap.
Uhh, let me clarify what I said before, I took my hard drive, and used 182GB which I set aside for windows, and 50.2GB partition which I have set aside for linux. I'm talking about what I put inside the 50.2GB. Exactly what goes into it.
smokie mcpott
07-23-07, 11:08 PM
MRD already answered that with his last post
easiest thing to do, as MRD said, is to make one partition for / and one for swap. Since you have 2gb ram, the easy thing to do is to make a 2gb swap partition. It is most likely going to be overkill to have 2gb of swap, but you won't have to worry about running out of swap space. So, you hard drive will have 3 partitions: the windows partition, 48gb Linux partition, 2gb Linux Swap partition. Use cfdisk to create the Linux and swap partitions, and make sure you set the "partition type" on the 2gb partition to "linux swap" (82) while you are in cfdisk. Then, you can follow the gentoo handbook and complete the installation. When you download the stage3 tarball and extract it, you will have all of the necesary directories created (i.e. /tmp, /home, /boot, /var, /bin, /usr etc. etc.)
follow the handbook and don't try to skip steps, especially because this is your first install.
asusradeon
07-24-07, 09:36 AM
a 2gb swap is overkill ? whats mine then i have a 10gb seperate hdd for my swap :)
a 2gb swap is overkill ? whats mine then i have a 10gb seperate hdd for my swap :)
paranoid?
Misfit138
07-24-07, 10:19 AM
paranoid?
LOL.
May I just simply say that I have 2 GB RAM and have always used 1GB swap, but I have never seen it used. (It's always at 0 GB used) GNU/Linux must have excellent memory management or something because Windows always uses swap, no matter how much RAM you have.
LOL.
May I just simply say that I have 2 GB RAM and have always used 1GB swap, but I have never seen it used. (It's always at 0 GB used) GNU/Linux must have excellent memory management or something because Windows always uses swap, no matter how much RAM you have.
I have 2gb ram and a 2gb swap, and like you, I never see my swap used. The old rule of thumb used to be that swap space = 1.5 x ram amount. I think that if you have 1gb or more of ram and you are only doing light computing (browsing the internet, gaming, etc.) then you can probably get away with 256mb or less total swap space. If you have 512mb-1gb ram, i'd probably keep my swap at 1xram amount, just to be safe. And if you have less than 512mb, i'd probably go with the 1.5xram rule.
on my 48mb ram laptop, i think i made the swap 256mb...to make sure I had plenty of room to move things around.
Umm, I have to ask, which one shall I download?
??? (http://torrents.gentoo.org/)
I'm sorry I'm such a newb at this sort of thing. The Rig I'm putting it on is in my sig...
Download "install-x86-minimal-2007.0-r1" for 32 bit x86 processors.
Download "install-amd64-minimal-2007.0" for 64 bit AMD processors (or Core 2 Duo's ... but NOT Core Duo's)
a 2gb swap is overkill ? whats mine then i have a 10gb seperate hdd for my swap
Using a 10 gb standalone for a swap isn't really the best idea... 10 gb drives are quite slow (usually ata33 or ata66), so you aren't getting much speed. The best thing is to use a partition off of separate, but fast, drive.
May I just simply say that I have 2 GB RAM and have always used 1GB swap, but I have never seen it used. (It's always at 0 GB used) GNU/Linux must have excellent memory management or something because Windows always uses swap, no matter how much RAM you have.
If this is the case, then you've misconfigured your linux. Linux will always fully use all available swap space (you can check with top). Make sure you assign partition type 82 to the swap partition and that you run mkswap on it once to set up the swap filesystem. Now try something. Try running "swapon /dev/yourswappartition". You'll probably now see that the swap was never turned on. Now under top, you should see the swap space being used. This swapon is normally accomplished with a line in /etc/fstab. Yours may be absent or incorrect.
In general, the rule for choosing swap space is 2x the amount of physical ram. It's not absolute though.
Download "install-x86-minimal-2007.0-r1" for 32 bit x86 processors.
Download "install-amd64-minimal-2007.0" for 64 bit AMD processors (or Core 2 Duo's ... but NOT Core Duo's)
you also want stage3-i686-2007.0 for the former and stage3-amd64-2007.0 for the latter
Misfit138
07-24-07, 05:22 PM
If this is the case, then you've misconfigured your linux. Linux will always fully use all available swap space (you can check with top). Make sure you assign partition type 82 to the swap partition and that you run mkswap on it once to set up the swap filesystem. Now try something. Try running "swapon /dev/yourswappartition". You'll probably now see that the swap was never turned on. Now under top, you should see the swap space being used. This swapon is normally accomplished with a line in /etc/fstab. Yours may be absent or incorrect.
In general, the rule for choosing swap space is 2x the amount of physical ram. It's not absolute though.
Hmmm...Splat and I both notice 0 MB of our swap space used...And, yes, I have always activated with swapon..(If I have ever forgotten, I invariably catch the error on bootup.)
However I have never consulted top, merely superkaramba or some such monitor.
If top shows 0 swap usage, there is a problem. The linux kernel will always use some swap.
For example, this machine has 1.5 gb of ram. I'm running gnome, a terminal, and firefox. Obviously, that doesn't exceed 1.5 gb, and top shows that some of my swap is used.
It may not use all the swap, or even much, but if it shows ZERO swap usage, you have a problem.
Swap: 1951888k total, 3180k used, 1948708k free, 881580k cached
ok so i have 3mb used. it looks like 0 on gkrellm :)
Yeah that means your swap is active at least, so you're ok. It's just not using it much. If it says 0, then you would have a problem.
Misfit138
07-24-07, 09:00 PM
Hmmm....weirdness.
This is from my Frugalware system:
Swap: 1012084k total, 0k used, 1012084k free, 423276k cached
...and from my Arch:
Swap: 843404k total, 0k used, 843404k free, 105956k cached
2gigs of system RAM, swap is on, and has swap entry in fstab on both systems. :shrug:
telexen
07-25-07, 11:31 PM
I usually see no swap usage from top until I'm running 2 or more VMWare guest OS's at once...
NEVER, I repeat NEVER use Redhat Linux. If you want a small, lightweight linux os, get fluxbuntu (fluxbuntu.org). It's VERY lightweight, though it'll take some tinkering, then again what linux doesn't. And I recommend you not use a GUI, because with those specs you're going to lag like hell, I don't care what you say.
ponkan pinoy
07-26-07, 11:11 PM
The server (non-GUI) install of the *buntus are all the same -- that is to say, the only thing that differentiates Ubuntu from Kubuntu from Xubuntu from Fluxbuntu is the X subsystem.
The server (non-GUI) install of the *buntus are all the same -- that is to say, the only thing that differentiates Ubuntu from Kubuntu from Xubuntu from Fluxbuntu is the X subsystem.
That's what I understand also, they could have made just one Buntu and during setup configure X based on hardware-specs. It seems to be a waste of time and energy to have to maintain an x-amount of *buntus. But maybe it isn't this easy..
ponkan pinoy
07-27-07, 10:26 PM
I don't think it's for the hardware specs. When Ubuntu first started they offered Gnome and KDE for the choice, and I think Xubuntu and Fluxbuntu evolved from the same desire for choice. I definitely have the hardware capability to run Gnome, and run it comfortably at that, I just like xfce's interface. Maybe I'll try KDE and fluxbox sometime.
I don't think it's for the hardware specs. When Ubuntu first started they offered Gnome and KDE for the choice, and I think Xubuntu and Fluxbuntu evolved from the same desire for choice. I definitely have the hardware capability to run Gnome, and run it comfortably at that, I just like xfce's interface. Maybe I'll try KDE and fluxbox sometime.
I understand.. still.. whatever the reason for prefering a wm, it seems to be rather unefficient to offer seperate distro's soly(sp?) based on choice of wm.
Why not have the setup-wizard ask for preference.. (may or may not be based on specs)
Now I see a lot of folks actually removing Ubuntu and installing Kubuntu simply because they want to use KDE.. not knowing they can use any wm they want with every *buntu.
illuminati11_13
07-28-07, 04:01 PM
I understand.. still.. whatever the reason for prefering a wm, it seems to be rather unefficient to offer seperate distro's soly(sp?) based on choice of wm.
Why not have the setup-wizard ask for preference.. (may or may not be based on specs)
Now I see a lot of folks actually removing Ubuntu and installing Kubuntu simply because they want to use KDE.. not knowing they can use any wm they want with every *buntu.
Part of what Ubuntu does is set up the distro so that it is fully usable with the need for the command line. This is the same with all graphical distros. Basically, the Canonical folks made a whole bunch of replacement GUIs for things that would ordinarily be done through the command line. These GUIs are desktop enviroment specific. I think this is why a lot of graphical distros are locked into one desktop environment or another.
Part of what Ubuntu does is set up the distro so that it is fully usable with the need for the command line. This is the same with all graphical distros. Basically, the Canonical folks made a whole bunch of replacement GUIs for things that would ordinarily be done through the command line. These GUIs are desktop enviroment specific. I think this is why a lot of graphical distros are locked into one desktop environment or another.
Thats it..
It's probably why the *buntus are so popular (the choice is made for the user) and why Ubuntu is sometimes hated in the GNU/Linux-community (the locking-in sort of "bites" freedom of choice).
Edit: typo
Flamed_Chip
07-30-07, 09:57 AM
The only difference between any of the Ubuntu variants is the set of desktop environment packages that are installed initially. It is trivial to change between any of them without reinstalling. You can also install it without Xorg etc and then make your choice later, giving you what is essentially a Debian setup with some newer packages/ideas. Ubuntu in no way restricts freedom of choice.
Ubuntu and other similar distros aimed at offering user friendliness are only "hated" by ill-educated, elitist and often egotistical users, which unfortunately the Linux community, and Gentoo community in particular seem to suffer with quite badly.
Misfit138
07-30-07, 12:45 PM
Ubuntu and other similar distros aimed at offering user friendliness are only "hated" by ill-educated, elitist and often egotistical users, which unfortunately the Linux community, and Gentoo community in particular seem to suffer with quite badly.
I could not agree more. Never were more truthful words spoken.
An extremely shameful aspect of such behavior is the ignorance of the "real men use Distro X" mentality.
While it cannot hurt to learn a more manual distro, not everyone has the time nor interest to do so. While I personally dislike Ubuntu, I cannot help but have tremendous respect for the whole development team for bringing GNU/Linux to the desktop of more average computer users.
It is no accident that easier, more user-friendly distros are rising in popularity on Distrowatch and other sites, much to the chagrin of disgruntled elitists who refuse to accept such a concept.
I must admit, part of the reason I wanted to learn how to use a more manual distro was simply to prove that "if a human being can do it, I can do it." I came to this attitude in the face of much egotism and hostility. Unfortunately, I think most people who meet with such resistance will simply go back to using Microsoft Windows Vista.
People who display such arrogance truly have some serious inadequacies on their part and have a lot of growing up to do.
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