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Network Admin Linux

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ErikD

Member
Joined
May 6, 2004
Location
NYC
I am thinking about setting up a second hard drive to swap into my old laptop I leave at work for network administration type stuff. The laptop is an IBM X20 with a 700Mhz PIII (or it might be 600MHz) and 320MB of RAM. I am looking to have one hard drive with a Linux install (which can have all of the typical network administrator goodies like nagios, nmap, ethereal, syslog, etc.) and another with Windows for doing NT only type stuff. I figure this way I have all of my bases covered.

Now I know Live CD is an option, but this model doesn't have a CD drive, so it isn't that great for me. Also Windows is already installed on the drive and I don't feel like messing with that install as it is joined to a domain, has some utilities I use installed, files, etc. So I see it as leaving me with two different hard drives. Or I could possibly get a larger one, partition down to the same size, clone to that and then install Linux.

Right now though I am just looking for what the best HD install distro would be. Thanks for any input.
 
Any general purpose distro will work for you. Just use one you're comfortable with. One you like to use.

If you're a bit judicious (no KDE/gnome, no source based distro), you can get away with ~1GB of diskspace for your purpose btw: netinstall of debian (testing or unstable) with fluxbox and a few network tools should fit in less than 1GB, swap won't be necessary. So a different harddisk or a newer bigger one is probably not necessary.
 
u can choose any distro You want as klingens mentioned. You can do in it what ever You want. I would choose the one i now the best and have the most experience, cause then You would know where and how everything is and works ;)

Good Luck ErikD !
 
Captain Newbie said:
If you are looking for an adventure, try Gentoo. :cool:

With a 700 MHz P3, that would be an adventure methinks!
:p

Even with a dual core X2 I am still a bit surprised at the long compile times of the base packages in Gentoo....but for some reason it appeals to my taste for the bizarre. :burn:
 
Maybe I will just use Slackware then. I was thinking there might have been some specialized distro around there somewhere.

I guess I could try repartitioning the drive to give me some space for Linux. The only thing is that I already have Windows all installed and don't really feel like starting that over again.
 
you could always use DSL on a thumb drive. And if you can't boot off USB drives, you can use a floppy boot disk to initiate things.
 
splat said:
you could always use DSL on a thumb drive. And if you can't boot off USB drives, you can use a floppy boot disk to initiate things.

Nah, I want something that runs off the HD. This way I can just grab the laptop if I am in a rush and have everything I need. Also I would need to install extra software and likely save stuff too. Don't know how well that works when running on a USB drive.
 
Captain Newbie said:
It builds, or should build, a deep respect for the complexity of software. :cool:

Well said.

Erik, let me know how you like Slack. I tried 11.0 briefly, but I never really gave it much of a chance. (I was a little disappointed over the lack of grub and package dependency mngt..plus it nuked my Windows partition and I never figured out how or why) Slack seems to do a lot of things right, though IMHO. Seems like a hi-quality, straightforward install and the distro itself seems nice and simple. It has a reputation for being very stable too, from what I read. :)
 
I like Slack a lot actually. My current main PC dual boots between that and XP (although to be honest I haven't booted into Slack for over a year). Does everything I could need and have never had any major problems with it. The last version I have used though is 10.1 I believe.

Only problem with it might be HD size. While at work Friday I checked on that laptop and it has a 20GB drive with more than half used for Windows, Office, etc. Not leaving much room for another OS, might end up looking to another drive or a smaller distro afterall. I figure I can give 5GB up and still have plenty for Windows. More important at the moment though is the laptop is only recognizing 128MB of a 256MB stick of RAM (it has 64MB built in).
 
you might consider geting a CF solid state HDD but i dont know exactly how well equiped your particular lappy is equiped to handle it. if you can connect it though you could use grub to dual boot and it would allow booting from the additional media. another option would be to simply buy a larger hard disk for it, im sure 2.5" PATA laptop drives are alot cheeper than they once were and just mirror your current partition over to it and have a 2nd to install your linux to.
 
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